Keeping the Creed
by loudmouthgeek
Summary: Complete AU. Santana is one of the top assassins in The Brotherhood, so when she's given the task of eliminating some random blonde dancer, she thinks it sounds like a simple job. It's anything but... Trigger Warnings on appropriate chapters.
1. Waiting, Watching

**Disclaimer: I own neither Glee nor any part thereof. No money is being made off of this story and is intended only for entertainment purposes; therefore it falls within the parameters of "Fair Use"**

**A/N: Okay, so this is so hugely different than anything else I've ever written which was sort of the appeal of writing it, I think. So the story is something of a crossover (but not really) with the video game series Assassin's Creed. Aside from some of the back story which not much of it is here, but it will come into play in later installments. **

**For those of you unfamiliar with it the short version is that the Knights Templar weren't disbanded in the 15****th**** century, that's just when they cut ties with The Church and went freelance. By the 21****st**** century they are a corporation called Abstergo Industries that has developed a method of accessing memories of our genetic ancestors which are stored in our DNA. What their endgame is isn't clear but Abstergo and The Templars are not good people. Dedicated to fighting them at every turn is The Brotherhood of Assassins, a band of professional killers who train from a young age to preserve innocent life and remain a secret in their endless war against The Templars. There's a lot more to the game but it's not relevant here since those characters and events won't appear here.**

**Anyway, hope everyone enjoys…**

**Chapter 1**

**Waiting, Watching**

Santana Lopez always took her time on a job. In her personal time she was quite impatient, but when she was working time didn't matter. It was part of her motto, no surprises, if you took your time and studied your target until you were _absolutely _certain that you knew all of their habits and routines down to the smallest detail, then you'd never be surprised and there couldn't be any complications. The Brotherhood of Assassins demanded that all targets be taken out cleanly, no evidence, no witnesses and _no_ collateral damage, so for Santana patience was the name of the game.

To that end, this Pierce job was infuriating. When she'd been sent the file for it, Santana thought the job would be a walk, in and out in less than a week. How hard could it be to track and eliminate a 22 year old dancer with seemingly no combat training or any sort of special skills? There was nothing in the girl's file as to why or how she was involved with the Templars and even less to explain why the highly secretive cabal was interested in her, but that wasn't for Santana to worry about. Orders came down from above and they had to be followed or The Brotherhood would fall apart. Without trust, you had nothing. So the orders came down and Brittany Susan Pierce of New York City would die by her hand.

Except that this woman was impossible to predict. She had seemingly no routine, no habits. She woke up anywhere between 6am and 2pm, sometimes she would go to dance classes, sometimes as a student, sometimes as a teacher, sometimes she'd have lunch before, sometimes she wouldn't eat until dinner. Some days she would go to Central Park and feed the ducks three days in a row. Some days she'd go to the Aquarium for hours on end. Some days she'd take the subway, some days a cab, and others she'd walk dozens of blocks. Some nights she'd sit home and watch cartoons, many nights she'd go out but never to the same club in any noticeable pattern, some nights to a dance club, sometimes to gay bars, sometimes to small concert venues, sometimes she'd pick someone up, sometimes she'd be picked up, men or women, she seemed indiscriminate in that regard, other nights she'd fend off everyone that approached her. There was literally no predicting this girl. It was as though she acted purely on impulse alone. Santana found it simultaneously fascinating and infuriating.

One of the first things The Brotherhood teaches recruits about tracking is that human beings are creatures of habit. People instinctively flock to certain places that they feel comfortable or safe. Recruits learn that in a week of watching someone you will always find at least three places a target gravitates toward, and yet in over three weeks of watching Brittany… her target, never personalize targets by thinking about their names, because then they become people with families and that just complicates things… in three weeks of Santana tracking her target, she had never visited the same restaurant, club, bar, or coffee shop more than twice and never in any predictable pattern. The dance studio was out, too many witnesses including lots of children. Santana would never risk the lives or well being, physical or mental, of kids by dispatching a target somewhere they frequented. That left only one other place, the apartment and that wasn't going to be easy.

The fifteenth floor apartment was an open floor plan loft, essentially a huge square with no interior walls other than those of the bathroom and one small closet. Contrary to what you see in the movie and on TV shows, most private residences don't have air ducts big enough for humans to crawl through, maybe some of the more petite members of The Brotherhood like Sister Corazon could pull that off, even then it was risky, but for Santana and her killer curves it was an impossibility. Infiltration of the building was going to be tricky. The floor to ceiling windows didn't open and they let in far too much light for her liking. The roof was less than ideal. The door had an alarm that went off when it was opened and it wasn't designed to be opened from the outside. Santana had training in bypassing alarms but it was never something she excelled at, and she didn't like relying on uncertainties. No surprises. The front door was doable. Security was tight but no security team was perfect, she had aliases a plenty that could get her through the door and even up the elevator, but would Brit… the target be there once she got there? She acted on a whim at seemingly all times. It would take Santana at least fifteen minutes to get from her observation perch to the front door, much less through security and up to the apartment and security wouldn't just let her disappear into the building and never come back out if she wound up having to wait hours or even days on the target to return.

It was missions like this where Santana understood why other assassins preferred to work in pairs or small groups so that someone could do surveillance while others infiltrated, and why others worked with tech. But tech could be compromised and used against you and Santana didn't get along with most people and even if she did she didn't have a partner now nor did she have time to learn to partner with someone for this mission, that took months if not years to become accommodated to how another assassin worked. For good or ill, she'd accepted this mission so that meant it was hers to accomplish, the logistics of it were just something that she'd have to work out.

She contemplated procuring a high powered rifle and taking her down from her observation perch but guns were unpredictable and Santana couldn't account for the glass in the window. How thick was it? Was it bulletproof? And then, of course, she'd have to engineer some way to get the bullet back because that would count as evidence. No, a gun wasn't going to work either. How was it that this girl of no particular importance managed to get herself one of the best defensible apartments in the city?

The best chance she had to get into the apartment with the target without drawing attention was to be invited there which meant contact with the target and that had an element of risk. Contact meant being seen which was generally against the Creed of the Brotherhood. It meant being seen by the target and more problematically it meant being seen near the target, being seen _with_ the target. It meant potential witnesses. Santana usually avoided contact for just that reason. It wasn't ego for Santana to say that she knew that she was strikingly beautiful. It wasn't ego because it was a detriment as often as not, since people tended to remember seeing someone as beautiful as her. Add in the fact that Brittany was… the target was what many would describe as adorably cute and impossibly sexy and that meant that the two of them together for any length of time would catch someone's eye, and probably several someone's.

A cold approach at one of the bars or clubs was the best chance to minimize exposure but it carried a fairly high chance of being rejected and then where would she be? No, that wasn't the right play. It was time to put her seduction training to work. She'd used it plenty of times but she'd never had to use it on a job before, only in her personal time. She wasn't sure if she was eager to try something new, as she usually was, or worried about the unknown, maybe she was both.

Brittany almost never… the target almost never interacted with people in the park, ignoring them in favor of the animals, ducks and geese mostly, so that meant the best chance of catching her attention was at the dance studio. Santana knew how to dance, not as well as the target, but she'd pass for a dance class student easily, so three days later when she tracked the target heading towards the studio again, Santana quickly ducked into a secluded area to quickly don a set of black and red yoga pants and a red tank top. She made her way into the building paying the visitor's fee and quickly found the group her target was in and joined in. It went against every instinct Santana possessed to turn her back on a target but she needed Brittany to notice her. Rule number one of seduction was never make the first move, always let them come to you. To that end Santana positioned herself in front of and slightly to the left her target hoping that the rear view she'd be presenting would be enticing enough for Brittany to take the initiative.

After only a couple of minutes Santana started to feel the prickles at the back of her neck telling her that she was being observed. On instinct, she focused her threat sense, her trained ability to pick up hostile intentions in her immediate area, and found none. She hazarded a glance back over her right shoulder to see if the person watching her was the one she wanted to be watching her. Her eyes met with Brittany's beautiful blues and the bubbly blonde smiled brightly at her... that is to say that she made visual connection with the target and, ah fuck it, this was a seduction job she could think the girl's name. Brittany smiled at her. Santana returned the smile before remembering that she was supposed to be playing it cool and making the girl work for her attention. Basic seduction technique: we pursue that which flees from us. Santana turned her focus back to the front of the room but continued to feel the prickles at her neck. She smiled to herself and tried to convince herself that it was a self-satisfied smirk but it wasn't. She was just flattered and happy.

After the class, Santana stopped by the door to get a bottle of water from the vending machine, or rather that was the story she was planning on telling Brittany when the blonde caught up with her, and right on cue she burst out of the classroom into the lobby and looked around to find the pretty Latina she was making eyes at earlier struggling with the vending machine. She bopped over to her and said, "Hey!"

"Hey," Santana replied. She wasn't sure which role to play with this girl. She'd witnessed her variously picking up or being picked up on several occasions and, once again, all of them were different, but she had to make a decision fast.

"You're a really good dancer," Brittany said to her, "are you in the business?"

Bashful, Bi-Curious Straight Girl, it is. Santana dropped her gaze and said, "Oh, gosh, no, but aren't you sweet for thinking I could be. Are you? I mean you're a lot better than me."

Brittany looked confused, "You only saw me for like a second. I kept wanting you to turn back around…"

"I was by here a couple of weeks ago," Santana clarified, "when I first got to town and I saw you teaching a class. I thought you were amazing." She was buttering the girl up to be sure but she really wasn't lying at all. She knew the girl to be an amazing dancer; weeks of surveillance had shown Brittany to be a virtual master of all forms of dance, even stripping. Santana tried to shake the last image from her head.

"So what's your name?" Brittany asked.

"Santana," she replied and then nearly freaked out on herself. Why the hell had she just done that? She'd just told a target her real name. She had a hundred working aliases and she could pull any of them out. She was supposed to be Christina Vargas, why the hell didn't she say that or any other fucking name other than her real goddamn name? Fuck it, in a couple of days it wouldn't matter.

"That's a really pretty name," she smiled, "I'm Brittany P. There's another Brittany in my circle of friends so she's Brittany L. and I'm Brittany P, but you don't know her so you can just call me Brittany, and I'm totally rambling, sorry about that. Anyways some friends and I are going out tonight," Brittany said, "if you wanted to join us that would be totally awesome."

"Oh, yeah?" Santana was playing the bashful thing to the hilt; she smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear willing herself to blush if she could. "That sounds great but I can't tonight. I told my sister I'd babysit my niece and nephew so her and her husband could go out. It's their anniversary. Thanks so much for inviting me, rain check?"

"Totally! You wanna give me your number?" Brittany asked.

Santana rolled her eyes, "I'm having trouble with my carrier. I'm going there now. I may be cancelling my contract. Can I have yours and I'll text you when I know for sure what's going on?"

"Yeah, sure," Brittany said. She went to the desk just inside the front door, grabbed a scrap of paper, wrote quickly, and walked back to Santana. "Here you go," she said, "we're sometimes out late if your sister comes back early enough." Santana took the piece of paper and saw that Brittany had dotted her I with a smiley face. Santana's natural urge to want to gag at this never came, surprisingly.

"Okay," Santana nodded, "I'll let you know. I'll text you soon."

"K."

Accepting the first offer of a date, especially a group outing, was a rookie mistake. It gave the inviter all the power in the relationship. They could dictate the terms of the relationship, virtually forever. Waiting was always the better option for the group invite. Brittany wanted her, she knew that now, and she thought Santana was some on the verge, baby lesbian so she'd try again and soon, but something more personal with a better chance of getting the invite home. She went to the nearest cell phone store and bought the most impressive looking burner phone she could find and an hour after she left the dance studio, she shot Brittany a text with her number. After that she knew she needed new clothes, clothes to match the personality that was supposed to be Christina Vargas but now was Santana. She was still pissed at herself for that and was trying to figure out why she'd done it, just so that it never happened again. She'd been thinking about the night Brittany brought some guy back to her place and done an elaborate striptease, but so what? It's not like Santana hadn't ever seen a pair of tits before, and even if Brittany's were possibly the most amazingly perfect pair she'd ever seen, that was no reason to be so off her game. What the hell was it about this girl? First Santana couldn't stop calling her by her name even though it's never been a problem before, then she told the girl her real name. Was Santana slipping?

Santana didn't hear from Brittany the next day, not that she expected to. She never came home which was odd since she almost always did, even if it _was_ at four in the morning, but once again this was a girl who had no pattern whatsoever. The subsequent morning she saw Brittany come stumbling in after 9 am. She looked as though she'd been up for two says. Disheveled hair and rumpled clothes, plastic arm bands and neon face paint; Santana guessed she'd likely been to a rave. The exhausted girl shed her dress and collapsed on the bed. She knew she'd have hours before Brittany even so much as moved again, so she went to the dance studio to the class that she'd attended two day previous and afterwards set some bait texting Brittany, "missed u at dance 2day, hope 2 hear from u -Tana". She dared to catch some extra sleep to make up for the absence of any yesterday. Necessity had forced her off Brittany's trail and she hadn't been able to pick the unpredictable girl back up. If she was at a rave that would certainly explain why.

Part of her training with The Brotherhood was learning to go without sleep for long stretches of time and to exist on far less sleep when she did. No graduate of The Academy required more than four hours of sleep in a day and could go for at least three days without any at all. Santana had herself trained down to three and a half hours a day and had once had gone 94 hours before she had to sleep. However, there was no need to press herself now, her target was asleep and likely to stay that way for the better part of the day, so Santana let herself drift off.

The sound of her new phone ringing shocked her awake. She briefly examined the display and found she'd been out for five hours. It was, of course, Brittany calling; she was the only one that had this number. "Hello?"

"Tana?"

"Brittany?" She played dumb.

"Yeah, I didn't recognize your voice there for a second. I thought maybe some other girl with a sexy voice had answered," she said flirty. "I remember you said something about having a sister. I didn't wake you up did I?"

"If you'd called about one minute earlier you would have, but as it happened my alarm clock beat you to it."

"Okay, glad I didn't wake you. So do you like have to babysit tonight?"

"No, those little terrors are their mommy and daddy's problems tonight."

"That bad?"

"Only for me because they know Auntie Tana is such a pushover."

"Is that what everyone calls you? Tana? Cuz I was thinking I was gonna call you San," Brittany said.

"San's fine," she replied with a smile, "I think I like it." Anything that got Brittany to call her something other than her full first name was fine, but she honestly did like the sound of Brittany calling her San… which was problematic. Liking anything about Brittany was going to make what had to be done that much harder.

She tried to push it all down, but then Brittany giggled into the phone and it was easily the cutest thing that she'd ever heard and Santana smiled in spite of herself. "So if you're not babysitting," Brittany said, "can I take you up on your rain check from the other night?"

"Tonight?" Santana clarified. She honestly couldn't believe the girl was up already much less that she had the energy to go out again already. Maybe she had had some sort sleep control training too. The dossier didn't have anything that would indicate it, but it was the only guess Santana had.

"Yeah, totally," Brittany replied, "unless it's not a good night again…"

"No," Santana cut her off very quickly, too quickly for her own liking, "tonight is fine. What did you have in mind?"

"Not sure," she said, "I went to this huge party yesterday and there were so many people around. Wanna do something, just the two of us?" Santana smiled. "Like I dunno, do you wanna get some dinner or something?"

Santana grinned at the phone as though Brittany could see her. "Dinner sounds good," she said, playing up her bashfulness once again, "Maybe something else after if you wanted."

"Something like what?" The question was all eager curiosity.

"Well, like, I don't know... We're both pretty good dancers, I mean I'm pretty good. You're amazing. Maybe we could find somewhere not too crowded to get our dance on." Santana honestly didn't know if this babbling, tongue tied thing was an act anymore or not.

"That sounds awesome. If we're going dancing be sure to dress sexy. As sexy as you feel comfortable with anyway."

"Okay," Santana said, she'd show Brittany what the fuck sexy was, "I don't have a car, do you?" She already knew the answer of course.

"No," Brittany said.

"Okay, do you want to meet somewhere, or I could bring a cab around to get you?"

"Let's just meet," Brittany said, "that way neither of us is waiting on the other while the meter is running, y'know?"

"Smart," Santana said. She left it to Brittany where they ate. She picked a place that Santana hadn't heard of but Brittany assured her would be enjoyable and easy enough for the driver to find. They agreed to meet at 8 which was just over two hours away. Santana hung up and immediately jumped in the shower. When she got out she toweled herself off, opting to let her hair air dry to leave her natural wave for once. She then went about picking out clothes. Black lace push up bra to make her already amazing looking tits look even better and a matching thong. Tight black jeans, a red deep v-neck sweater that clung to her like skin and gray calf length high heeled boots completed the outfit. Brittany said dress sexy.

Santana arrived at the restaurant twenty minutes early to scope the place out. After about five minutes of looking the place over she suddenly realized that she really didn't have to bother. There was nothing that needed secured. _She_ was the predator in this situation. As far as Brittany was concerned this was just a date… or just hanging out… or something. Still Santana's instincts were to know her surroundings and she had time to kill. Being prepared wouldn't hurt anything.

Brittany arrived right on time and Santana was waiting outside the place to greet her. When Brittany stepped out of her cab she could only stare and say, "Whoa, San!"

Santana smiled at her and said, "Yeah, you too." Brittany's hair was in loose curls falling down over both shoulders and she was wearing this tiny black strapless mini dress with cutouts down the left side that demonstrated that the girl was clearly wearing nothing underneath. It was at this point that Santana began to worry that she might be in some trouble tonight.

An hour later, Santana _knew_ she was in trouble when she'd gone twenty straight minutes without thinking about the fact that this night was supposed to end in Brittany's death. She had spent the time listening as Brittany told stories about growing up in Lima, Ohio and someone named Lord Tubbington whom she originally thought to be a household pet until the girl started talking about his recurring smoking habit, laughing at her silly jokes, and basically behaving in all ways as if she were on a first date… not _acting_ like she was on a date, mind, but actually behaving as such. Mentally she berated herself for ever allowing herself to think about Brittany's name rather than just thinking of her as "the target" like she was trained to and for even contemplating the seduction approach, but there was just something about the girl. Santana _liked_ her. Santana settled the bill discretely on the way to the restroom, which Brittany was slightly upset by since she had been the one to ask her out, but Santana figured that The Brotherhood could pick up this lovely girl's last meal.

"So I got to pick where we ate, and you paid," Brittany said, "so you pick where we go dancing and I'll buy drinks."

"Sounds fair enough," Santana smiled and once again turned on the bashfulness, "So there's this club I've been told about called Passion?" It was one of the many places that Santana had tracked Brittany to in the last four weeks. It was also one of the places that Brittany had left alone at the end of the night, so less likely to run into a spurned lover.

"That's…" Brittany's eyes widened slightly and the vaguest hints of a smile appeared at the corners of her mouth, "You know that's a _gay_ night club, right?"

Time for Santana to act her ass off, one side of her mouth crept up in a sly smile and she tried to force herself to blush, tucked her hair behind her ear and said, "That's okay, right? I mean, this…" she feigned embarrassment, "this is _a date_, right?" Brittany smiled slightly. "I mean, you told me to dress sexy, then you show up in a dress that clearly demonstrates that you aren't wearing underwear, and then you're upset that I paid. It feels like a date to me."

Brittany's lips broke into a huge smile, "It totally is," she said, "I'm sorry for not asking you properly. I wasn't totally sure you were into girls or into me, but I think you're totally hot and I don't really know that much about you but I kinda like you, San."

"It's okay," Santana reassured her, "I knew what I was signing up for when we talked on the phone. I wanted this. I like you, too, Britt." Britt? Really? It was bad enough that she let her have a name, but now she was giving her a pet name, too? Santana began thinking that she was now completely screwed.

Forty five minutes later she knew that she wasn't screwed… she was fucked, completely and utterly fucked. Brittany was dancing with her body pressed tightly against her and she was loving every second of it. Brittany was dancing and smiling and laughing and Santana couldn't help but reflect the sweet girl's mood. Santana hadn't just let go and had fun in a long, long time, maybe not ever, but there was just something so infectiously sweet about Brittany that it was extremely easy to forget that she was in some way associated with an evil cabal bent on world domination. In fact, Santana was finding it harder and harder to believe that Brittany was a Templar. The notion seemed pretty absurd, but she really wasn't thinking about that at the moment. She was thinking about how amazingly sexy Brittany was when she was dancing, about how amazing it felt to be pressed up against her on the dance floor moving and sweating together as one, and about… about what it would be like to make love to Brittany, not just fucking her like she normally did all hands and friction but actually making love to her, pouring feelings and emotion into her touches to make Brittany feel what she feels. That, of course, led her to the sudden realization that to make love to someone you had to first be in love with them… hence why she knew she was fucked.

She was dancing face to face, chest to chest with Brittany, a half consumed and all but forgotten drink in one hand, the other encircling Brittany's waist. Brittany had her arms draped over Santana's shoulders her fingers interlaced behind her head. Santana was completely engulfed in the scent of the taller girl and she didn't know how she knew this but Santana would go to her grave swearing that Brittany smelled like a ray of sunshine.

Santana was trying to think and the scent and sight and sounds of Brittany were distracting… _very_ distracting. She was trying to reconcile her mission and what she wanted. For the first time in her life the two things were at odds. Her mission, The Brotherhood, fighting The Templars had been her whole life up until now. She had forsaken anything approaching a normal life to become an assassin. It was who she was, but being there in Brittany's arms, she wasn't sure it was who she wanted to continue to be, not if it meant killing Brittany to do it. Still it wasn't exactly easy to just decide to throw away everything you've worked for your whole life, especially on someone who very likely would move on to the next person tomorrow or the next day. In nearly a month, Santana had never seen Brittany with the same person more than once and she couldn't give up everything just to be a one night stand.

Then it happened. She was deep in thought about what to do and staring off into the distance when Brittany's soft lips pressed against hers. Santana's body reacted instinctively pressing herself against Brittany, tightening her grip around the girl's waist, and of course, returning the kiss with a mountain emotion behind it. In that moment, nothing else mattered. Assassins and Templars, missions and targets, the ceramic dagger in purse, none it mattered because she was kissing Brittany and that feeling was worth giving up anything, her past, her future, her life… _anything_, if she could just keep doing it.

Hands roamed over hips and butts and thighs. Santana was reminded of the now annoying drink that was occupying one of her hands that could have been of much better use elsewhere. Momentarily, however, she noticed a waitress nearing them and Santana unceremoniously plopped the glass on her tray and her right hand went to the bare skin of the cutout panel on Brittany's left hip and she lightly grazed the tips of her fingers over the naked skin there. Brittany's entire body shuttered and she finally broke off their kiss. She said, "San, there's something I need to tell you." Was this how she did it? Get someone so incredibly worked up and then tell them that they could be together but only for the night? If so then Santana would still agree. They would be together tonight and then she would complete her mission, and after that she would get herself taken off operations and get transferred to logistics or intelligence or some other department, because if Santana was going to have to kill this beautiful woman that she loved, she would be the last one. "When I was younger," Brittany continued, "and I first started understanding things about, y'know, feelings and stuff, I asked my mom about how I would know who I was supposed to spend my life with, she said that you just have to find someone that you feel an intense connection to, and I always wanted to feel for someone like my mom feels for my dad. Even after almost 30 years, they're so in love that it's ridiculous, and I wanted to find that so bad that I was… I've been what a lot of people would call slutty. I was always safe, but I've slept around a lot. It was always to try to find that connection and I'm telling you all of this because I think it's there between us. I hope me saying this doesn't freak you out because I know it's way early to be saying this sort of thing…"

Santana smiled from ear to ear and in that moment she made a decision. "It's okay, honey. I'm not freaked out," she said, "I feel it too. It's… I don't know it's like nothing I've ever felt before. The past is the past and nothing before tonight matters to me anymore."

Brittany beamed at her, "Do you wanna get out of her? Come back to my place?"

"Hells yes," Santana said.

**A/N: So thoughts? This will probably be about four or maybe five parts all told. That is, if you guys like it. (Edit: LOL!)**


	2. Getting In

**Disclaimer: I own neither Glee nor any part thereof. No money is being made off of this story and is intended only for entertainment purposes; therefore it falls within the parameters of "Fair Use"**

**A/N: So this chapter earns the story an M rating, so if you are reading from somewhere that frowns on such things be you warned. For dramatic storytelling purposes, I'm going to bounce around the timeline a little so watch the time/date headers to keep the events straight. Thanks for all the interest in this story. I hope everyone continues to enjoy.**

**For those following my other stories, I'm pretty sure than the second and final chapter of "Doing it Right" should be next. A sequel to "Beautiful Lost Girl" is also in the works. I'm having trouble with "You Can Do Better" because the show is pissing me off so bad right now. That's why I'm having to work on these stories that are so far removed from canon. I hope you'll bear with me.**

**Chapter 2**

**Getting In**

**11:25 pm EST, May 20th**

Santana and Brittany's mouths rarely broke contact the entire fifteen minute cab ride home. As they piled in the back of the stinking automobile, Brittany had broken contact exactly long enough to mumble out her address and then went right back to it. Though her attention was definitely divided, Santana noticed that the driver was going in circles though she wasn't sure if it was just to jack up the fare or if he was hoping for a free show. After the second time he made the wrong turn, she kicked the hell out of the seat and gave him a one eyed glare in the rear view mirror. After that he stopped messing around and drove toward Brittany's. The sleazy jerk of a driver almost got his show anyway when one of Brittany's hands dove into the neckline of Santana's blouse and under her bra tweaking a nipple between her thumb and forefinger. She cupped her hand over Brittany's not to stop her… because who the fuck would stop that… just to keep it from going any further until they were inside Brittany's apartment, and… okay maybe to add a little more pressure to the attention Brittany was paying her breast.

Brittany leaned into Santana kissing her neck and whispering, "San, I'm so wet for you."

Santana groaned and said, "Fuck, babe, you can't say shit like that to me. We've still gotta get back to your place."

Brittany took Santana's free hand in hers and brought the hand up to her bare thighs and brushed Santana's fingertips up and down the insides. Santana could feel the heat radiating from Brittany's sex. It was almost enough to make Santana lose control right there. "We don't _have_ to wait," Brittany whispered as she drew Santana's hand dangerously close to her core.

Santana flexed all the muscles in her arm to stop her. "Britt, do you really want our first time together to be in the back of some cab with some creepy, smelly cab driver watching?"

"Hey," the driver protested.

"You shut up and drive faster," Santana shouted back at him.

Brittany released Santana's hand which she quickly retracted. Brittany withdrew her hand from Santana's shirt as well, saying sadly, "No, I guess you're right." Brittany looked away.

Santana hooked a finger under Brittany's chin and turned her face back to her. "Look at me, babe. I want you," she said looking deep into blue eyes, "like you don't even know how much. I just want our first time to be something we can look back on happily and not some half drunk romp in a backseat." When Brittany still didn't say anything, Santana clapped their right hands together and pulled Brittany's tight against her heart. "Intense connection, remember?" Brittany smiled brightly and leaned back in to resume the heavy make out session.

When they finally made it to Brittany's building, the girls were virtually tripping over themselves to get out of the cab. Santana threw an indeterminate amount of cash at the driver. It may have been not enough or possibly far too much; at that moment she couldn't bring herself to care if she had tried. The kissing had been interrupted which she didn't like but they were making steady progress into the building so that was a plus. They rushed into the building and spent several tense minutes waiting on the elevator during which Santana seriously considered sweeping Brittany up in her arms and racing up the stairs. She knew she could do; she was a trained free runner. She could traverse the length of Manhattan Island on foot in under thirty minutes without leaving herself out of breath so fourteen flights of stairs wouldn't be much of a challenge, but it would tend to raise questions that Santana would rather not focus on right now, so she waited… impatiently.

The doors parted with a ding and Brittany pulled her quickly into the elevator and hit the 15 button without looking and pulled Santana into yet another heated kiss. Santana pushed Brittany gently against the far wall placing her hands on Brittany's hips. She wrapped her surprisingly strong arms firmly around Santana's neck and hiked one leg up and hooked it around Santana's thighs pressing herself firmly against Santana. She was again completely engulfed in the scent of Brittany. The scent of sunshine (Santana still had no better way to describe it) mixed with the musk of their shared arousal was overwhelming.

When the elevator doors dinged again, both girls looked excitedly to the door before realizing that they were only to the sixth floor. They quickly separated and Brittany pulled her dress back down from the obscene level it had risen to. The doors parted and a blonde haired guy about their age wearing coveralls and a tool belt stepped into the lift. From her weeks of surveillance, Santana knew him to be the building's handyman. "Good evening, Miss Pierce," the boy said with an enormous grin.

"Hi, Sam," she said smiling in return, "I told you like a million times you can all me Brittany."

"Sorry, ma'am, it's a Southern thing," he said over exaggerating his Southern drawl, "I work here, you live here. Until one of those things change you're Miss Pierce." Brittany smiled at him and he smiled back before returning eyes front.

Santana didn't like this Sam guy. She wanted to swear that it wasn't _just_ because he was blatantly flirting with Brittany, but she couldn't be sure. Her threat sense didn't ping on him so she was pretty sure he wasn't dangerous, but Santana's intuition told her that he was trouble.

She glared at him until her attention was drawn back to Brittany who had her gaze fixed on Santana and she nearly came just from the sight. Brittany looked like she wanted to devour her whole, skin flushed, pupils completely blown, bottom lip quivering. She'd never seen anyone look so turned on and so sexy in all her life.

The elevator dinged again at the twelfth floor and Sam departed wordlessly. Before the doors had even closed all the way Brittany and Santana had slammed their bodies together once more resuming their previous heated make out session. Brittany moved to assail Santana's neck with her lips, tongue, and teeth. Santana moaned loudly and slid her hands up the back of Brittany's thighs under the hem of her very short dress coming to rest and coming to rest on the smooth skin of round, firm cheeks of Brittany's ass. "Oh, God bless your amazing dancer's body, honey. I can't wait to see you out of this dress."

Just then the elevator dinged once more to announce their arrival at the fifteenth floor and Brittany detached herself from Santana and said, "Won't be long now." She turned to walk out of the elevator leaving the hem of her dress pushed up slightly over her butt so that Santana could watch her as she walked. She stood there transfixed at the sight for a long moment and only snapped out of it when the elevator doors started to shut again. She shot between the rapidly closing doors and hung a hard left to follow Brittany who had arrived at her door and was pulling her keys from her purse. She had the door unlocked and was pushing it open when Santana caught up with her. She grabbed Brittany's ass with both hands once again, this time firmly and pushed her into the apartment. Brittany squealed in surprise at Santana's fingers digging into her backside.

When the door clicked shut behind them, Santana was suddenly reminded of what had brought her to this moment. She remembered for the first time in almost an hour that Brittany was supposed to be a target to be eliminated. She remembered that there was a dagger in her purse that had been intended for Brittany, the same purse that Santana had almost "accidentally" left at the club until Brittany had spotted it on their way out the door. Santana wondered if she could really do it. Then she wondered which end result it was she was unsure of her being able to complete. Could she eliminate her target… which is to say, could murder this girl that she'd come to love in cold blood? Could she defy orders and let Brittany live? Could she betray The Brotherhood for someone she wasn't even sure loved her back? Someone who as connected to the Templars, no less?

Suddenly the absurdity of that thought hit her full force in the face. There was absolutely no way this beautiful, sweet, fun girl was a Templar. Her life revolved around a dance studio and partying, in over a month she had had no contact with anyone that struck Santana as suspicious, she'd accepted no packages from anyone that went unopened, and she'd never dealt in any large amounts of cash. This girl was _not_ a part of an evil cabal, much less an important enough part to warrant killing. Il Maestro had messed up. That was pretty much unheard of but it had to happen eventually she supposed.

Brittany turned around and grabbed Santana's wrists flinging them over her shoulders and pressed her body against Santana's trapping her against the solid door. Santana had to stop her combat instincts from kicking in and "defending herself" from the hot girl that was turning her on so much she could barely see straight. She had to remind herself that this wasn't a fight she was in she was in but the hottest bought of foreplay she'd ever experienced.

Brittany's fingers gripped the hem of Santana's sweater and started pulling it up and over her head. She had to take a step back and struggle a bit to get the sweater off because it was so tight. When Brittany looked back at Santana, her breath caught in her throat. Santana stood there, her hair tousled, toned, strong arms and well defined abs, beautiful tan skin, a truly spectacular pair of breasts in sexy black bra, her chest heaving from excitement and exertion, a light sheen of sweat covering her, she almost seemed to sparkle here and there from reflected moonlight and starlight.

"Britt, honey, where'd you go?" asked Santana. The Latina gave herself a once over to make sure there wasn't something disgusting on her. "What are you staring at?"

"You," Brittany said, "you… you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." A big bright smile broke out over Santana's face. "I want you so bad, San. We're both wearing too many clothes." With that she reached for the hem of her dress and in one fluid motion pulled it off over her head.

Yeah, The Brotherhood could go to Hell.

Now it was Santana's turn to stare. She'd seen Brittany naked before, almost daily, in fact. The girl lived in a studio apartment with one wall that was a floor to ceiling glass window without any curtains and she had a propensity for going without clothes at times, but Santana's view through her binoculars did absolutely no justice to the amazing girl in front of her, the tight, muscular dancer's body, the flawless, pale skin, the full perky breasts topped with rosy pink nipples. "Honey," Santana said her eyes not moving or blinking, "if you think I'm the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, then you've clearly never seen yourself naked."

Brittany smiled bashfully and started walking backwards toward the bed. "San, why are you still standing way over there?" She ran her hand down over her stomach, stopping in the soft patch of curly hair just above her opening. "Why aren't you over here touching me?"

"That is a damned excellent question," Santana said. She quickly kicked off her shoes and walked towards the bed unbuttoning her jeans while Brittany sat and slid backwards onto the bed. When she reached the headboard, Brittany turned to the side table and grabbed her camera and snapped a picture of Santana standing at the foot of the bed looking mindblowingly sexy in just her bra and her undone jeans with so much lust in her eyes.

"So hot," Brittany said.

The click of the camera's shutter grabbed Santana's attention quickly. There weren't supposed to be pictures of her. The second tenant of The Assassin's Creed is to remain anonymous and pictures of her, especially intimate pictures, were the opposite of that. This only reminded her that in refusing to kill Brittany she was also violating the third tenant of The Creed in compromising The Brotherhood by not respecting the chain of command, and like that she was starting to have doubts about what she was about to do. Her salvation came in the first tenant, to never do harm to innocents. Brittany was innocent. Santana knew this with a certainty that she'd never known before tonight.

"San," Brittany questioned, "is everything okay? Did I freak you out with the camera? I can delete it. I mean it's really, really hot and I don't wanna, but I also don't wanna make you uncomfortable."

"Keep it," Santana said just above a whisper.

"Are you sure cuz I don't have to," Brittany said.

"Do I look good?" Santana asked with a sexy smile as she pushed her jeans down over her hips, letting them pool at the floor.

"Baby, you look amazing," Brittany confirmed as Santana stepped out of her jeans. "Like if I wasn't already planning on having sex with you, that picture would totally make me want to."

Free of her pants, Santana crawled on all fours up over Brittany's naked body. She said, "Then keep it." Brittany smiled once again and took another picture of Santana perched above her like some kind of predatory animal ready to pounce. "Just remember this when I get hold of that camera," she said as she brought herself face to face with Brittany and kissed her once more. This kiss was less frantic than the others, it wasn't about lust but about tenderness and they both seemed to understand that intuitively. Santana shifted her weight to her left arm so that she could bring her right down to Brittany's thigh just above the knee. Her fingertips grazed ever so slightly over along her skin, slowly, torturously slowly for Brittany, up towards her hip.

Every single graze of skin against skin sent tiny little shocks of electricity through Brittany's body and she shuttered in response. So much so that when Santana's palm came to rest on her hip, Brittany almost missed the tiny tremble in Santana's hand… almost. Once she noticed the hand, Brittany, an absolute master of the movement of her body, went perfectly still and just felt Santana on top of her, and it wasn't just the hand that was trembling. She broke off the kiss and propped herself up on her elbows. "San, baby, what's wrong? Talk to me, please."

Santana dropped her head down to Brittany's chest and took a deep breath of the dancer's scent. It had the calming effect that she had hoped for. She kissed her in the valley between her breasts before stammering out, "I… I've never…"

"Never had sex with a girl?" Brittany prompted. "I can totally go first, if you want, show you how it goes. It's really not that different than having sexy times with yourself except that you can use your mouth."

"No, I…" Santana corrected, "I've had sex with girls before. I've… never made love to one… anyone, and I…"

Brittany interrupted her by tilting Santana's head up to look at her. She said, "Neither have I, and I totally get that you're probably freaked because it's way soon to be saying things like that, but just know that I'm right there with you, okay? Yeah, we've only known each other a couple days, and yeah we've only been out once and like I said I really don't know that much about you but I'm pretty sure I'm already in love with you. I mean, isn't that what love is? Wanting to be with someone no matter what? I don't think there's anything you could say that would change the way I feel about you."

"Are you sure?" asked Santana. "What if I told you I was some kind of bad person?"

Brittany just giggled and kissed Santana on the forehead, "Oh, San, you're not a bad person. If you're not ready for this, I totally understand, okay? And all you gotta do is say so."

"No," Santana said emphatically, "I want to."

Brittany smiled at her and said, "Good, then either get to it or roll over so I can cuz right now I'm so turned on, I feel like I'm on fire and I really, really need to feel you or be felt by you so I don't explode from the anticipation."

"Yes, ma'am," Santana responded playfully before pushing Brittany back down onto her back and burying her face in Brittany's neck.

"Oh fuck yeah," Brittany moaned and cupped Santana's bra clad breasts in both hands, "And as sexy as it is, take this damn underwear off. I want to feel all of you against all of me."

Brittany moaned again, but this time it was from the lack of contact as Santana sat up straddling Brittany's hips. The Latina reached behind her back for her bra's clasp. "I wouldn't have ever guessed you'd be this bossy in bed. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty hot. Just don't expect to get away with it all the time," she said with a smirk as she let the undergarment slide down her arms and flinging it aside. Brittany's eyes were transfixed on the newly revealed flesh. She flexed her upper arms to push her ample breasts together slightly. "See something you like, sweetie?" she teased.

Brittany reached out tentatively, almost like she was afraid to touch Santana's breasts like she so desperately wanted for fear of breaking some sort of magic spell. "Is this real?" she asked softly

"What? My tits?" Santana asked confused, "Yeah, they're all me." She pulled Brittany's outstretched hand towards her and pressed it again one of her breasts and held it there with her own hand. Both girls sighed at the contact.

"N…no, is… is this real?" she clarified. "I'm not like dreaming or something, right? I went to this rave a couple of days ago and took some stuff and was awake for a long time. I'm not like sleeping having this way sexy dream am I? Cuz I might die if I woke up and you went back to just being some girl from my dance studio that was maybe flirting with me a little bit, and you're so perfect, San, I..."

Santana let go of Brittany's hand on her breast. "Sit up," she said. Brittany just looked confused. "I want to show you something. Sit up here," Santana clarified as she shifted back from Brittany's hips to her thighs so she could sit up. Santana pointed to her sternum just above her breasts and said, "Put your ear right here." Brittany did as asked and Santana wrapped both arms around the girl's head. "You hear my heartbeat? It's been beating that fast for you all night… since you got out of that cab at the restaurant at least. I'm real. This is real. I'm not some girl that was definitely flirting with you a little bit at the dance studio. I'm far from perfect, honey, but I _am_ yours, and you're mine, for as long as you'll have me. I love you, Brittany." She soon felt warm tears running down her chest and she held the girl tightly. After a couple minutes, Santana felt one of Brittany's thumbs grazing the underside of her breasts. "We don't have to… if you're not in the mood anymore," she whispered into the top of Brittany's head.

Then without warning Santana suddenly found herself flipped over on her back with Brittany on top of her. Her blue eyes dark with lust, desire, and love, "We're totally going to. Only difference now is I'm going first." Brittany attached herself to Santana's neck and shoulder area kissing, biting, and licking while her hands found Santana's ample breasts. "I thought you had like nice boobs and a really great bra but turns out they look even better out. I'm totally a boob girl." She moved her mouth down to take one of the large dusky nipples in her mouth. There was a very sudden intake of breath and Santana arched herself into Brittany's mouth and tongue. Brittany's left hand attended Santana's other breast while she slid her right hand down the Latina's stomach to the waistband of her panties. "I think I told you to get rid of these," she said as she started pulling them down with one hand. Santana lifted herself off the bed to accommodate Brittany in disposing of the last of their clothing. She ghosted her fingertips back up the entire length of Santana's muscular legs slowing the closer she got to where Santana wanted… needed those fingers. Brittany kissed her way back up to Santana's neck and said, "Are you ready?"

"So ready," Santana whispered.

Brittany brushed a finger through the girl's folds. "God, you're so wet, baby."

"I blame you," Santana smiled briefly before groaning loudly, "Definitely your fault." Brittany giggled her adorably cute little giggle as she easily slid her middle finger all the way into Santana's pussy and brushed her clit with her thumb. Santana's whole body convulsed and she rasped out, "More." Brittany withdrew her finger and pressed two back in. "Yesssssss," she hissed out. Over the next few minutes, Brittany started to work up a quick, steady pace in and out and Santana's body responded.

"Is that good for you, baby?"

"So good," she responded quickly. "I'm getting close, hon."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"K," Brittany said, "Turn over on your side and touch me. I want us to come together." When Santana did respond right away she added, "Please, baby. I really want you to touch me and I want to come with you inside me, San. Please?"

Santana groaned at the need in her voice and said, "God, anything for you, Britt." She shifted and rolled onto her side taking a minute to find her balance against Brittany's rhythmic thrusting. When she felt she had it, Santana sought out Brittany sex stopping briefly to run her fingers through the soft curls just above it.

"Oh yeah, San, like that," Brittany moaned as the girl's fingers gazed her clit.

"Two?" Santana asked breathlessly.

"Three," Brittany said.

"I don't want to hurt you, honey," Santana said painfully aware of the multiple meaning of that statement coming from her. She knew she meant it in every way.

"You won't," Brittany reassured her. Santana rubbed her stiff clit for another couple seconds before, as gently as possible, inserting three fingers into Brittany all at once. Brittany gasped at the sensation but let out the sexiest sigh Santana had ever heard. Santana strived to match Brittany's pace and found it quickly but had to try hard to maintain it. Her body tremored every time Brittany thrust into her and the pleasure coursing through her body was starting overwhelm her senses. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she got precariously close, but Brittany stilled her fingers. "Look at me, San," Brittany demanded. Santana's eyes snapped forward once more. Brittany's chest was heaving and her whole body was flushed. "Keep looking at me and tell me when you're gonna come. Don't look away again or I'll stop again."

"I'm really close, honey."

"Me… too, baby. Just a little more."

"You're so tight, Britt."

"So good, so, so good."

The girls fixed their gazes on one another, brown eyes locked on blue. Both had so much desire, lust, want, and need in their faces. Their shared desire only intensified the sensations coursing through them. The emotions between them were palpable. Both girls scooted closer to the other until they were practically right against one another. They were still thrusting steadily, both working the other to the edge of release, breathing the same air, sharing the same breath.

"Britt," Santana wheezed, "I'm gonna…"

"Hold on," Britt panted, "I'm almost there. Go faster." Santana sped up her pace while Brittany slowed just a little bit. Santana was breathing hard trying to hang on and wait for her girl. Brittany reacted to the faster thrusts with greatly shortened breaths and Santana was worried that she'd hyperventilate and pass out but before she could even attempt to verbalize that the blonde said, "Now," and sped her thrusts into Santana back up, "Come for me, Santana." It was just a tiny little breathy whisper but that was all it took and both girls came undone calling out for the other both still staring at the other and the flood of emotion on top of the physical sensation was breathtaking. Both girls were physically trembling and still buried in one another's sexes cause aftershocks in each other almost as intense as the first wave, pleasure multiplying on itself for several minutes afterwards.

They lay like that for several minutes regaining their breath and still just staring at each other. They told each other that they loved them with their eyes and with small smiles, both reading the other's emotions like they were an old familiar book. Eventually, Brittany was the first to withdraw her hand followed quickly by Santana and both girls licked their fingers clean. Santana moaned at the taste of Brittany and said, "I can't wait to taste you."

"Cuddles first?"

"As you wish," Santana said opening her arms to the other girl. Brittany giggled and rolled over pressing her back against Santana's front. The brunette wrapped the dancer up in her arms tightly.

"Te amo, mi preciosa."

"Love you, too," Brittany said, "Just don't fall asleep on me."

"Querida, that is something you _definitely_ do not have to worry about."

**10:20 am EST, May 21st**

Brittany finally started to stir and the light in her eyes told her that it was definitely daytime. The bed beside her was cold and while that was not remotely an uncommon occurrence, she suddenly felt so lonely that she thought she was going to start crying. She had grown so incredibly use to having Santana around her so very quickly. She sat up and looked around. Before her eyes registered anything she smelled coffee. "San?" she called out.

"I'm here," she responded. Brittany looked over to find her in the big overstuffed chair by the window. Being backlit by the bright day outside Brittany couldn't see more than the outline of her, but she looked to still be naked.

"What time is it?"

"It's pretty early considering how late we were up, but I need you to wake up and talk to me about some things. There's coffee. I didn't know how you like it or I'd have poured you a cup already."

"That's okay," Brittany said still shake off her grogginess. She walked on wobbly legs over to the kitchen area and poured herself a mug full and retrieved the milk from the fridge. "What did you need to talk about?"

"I need to know everything you know about Abstergo Industries and Project: Morningstar," Santana said evenly.

"There's not much to tell," Brittany said taking a sip of her coffee before thoughts started to catch up to her, "How do you know about those things? Why do you… why do you want to know about them?"

"Because, honey," Santana said, "a very powerful organization sent me here to kill you and I'm pretty sure this Morningstar is why."


	3. Investigating

**Disclaimer: I own neither Glee nor any part thereof. No money is being made off of this story and is intended only for entertainment purposes; therefore it falls within the parameters of "Fair Use"**

**A/N: Thank you to everyone for bearing with me through the holidays. It's a crazy time for me. Anyway, I hope everyone is still enjoying. **

**Chapter 3**

**Investigating**

**6:04 am EST, May 21st**

Santana's eyes shot open. A quick examination showed that it was still dark outside and Brittany was still curled up under her left arm where she remembered last seeing her. She guessed that she'd been asleep for less than an hour, but it wasn't the duration of sleep that had her concerned but rather the fact that she'd done it at all. She hadn't fallen asleep without meaning to in almost eight years. That was part of her training. She was slipping. It hadn't even been twelve hours and already Brittany had put her off her game. To be fair she'd never spent five hours having the most intense sex of her life before either. She'd had and caused more orgasms than she could adequately recall, so maybe it wasn't Brittany putting her off her game. Maybe she'd just felt safe enough to relax and let her exhaustion from the marathon love making session wash over her.

She looked at the beautiful blonde sleeping peacefully next to her. Last night (and earlier this morning) it had seemed such an easy decision to give up on The Brotherhood to be with her when she was standing in front of her naked. Okay, fair enough, Brittany was still naked and maybe her being curled up against and partly draped over her was an even more beautiful sight than the wonder that was her naked form alone. Santana just couldn't help but think that things get said in throes of passion that weren't necessarily true and there had been a lot of passion in the last few hours.

She knew without doubt that she meant everything she had said, and she really, really hoped that Brittany meant what she said too but could she be certain of it? She was 99% sure since Brittany hadn't just said them in the throes of passion but explained to her that she was falling for her before sex ever entered the picture. She just couldn't help but wonder about that nagging 1% though.

On top of that she was still wondering how Il Maestro had gotten the orders so messed up. The very idea that this sweet, slightly ditzy party girl was connected to the Templars was ridiculous. It wasn't like Il Maestro to make mistakes. "Don't move until you are certain of the stroke" was the man's personal motto after all.

Santana was now suddenly cursing her ability to function on so little sleep. If she wasn't so well trained, she'd be asleep next to a beautiful, naked woman right now and not questioning everything she had ever known in her life, but she was and she had two seemingly irreconcilable facts that she had to piece together. Il Maestro didn't make mistakes especially not about targets and Brittany Pierce was _definitely_ not a Templar. It was time for her to look around. She tried to extricate herself from Brittany as gently as she could. Weeks of study showed that she was a light sleeper, and disturbing her when she looked so peaceful was the absolute last thing wanted, even if it likely would have lead to even more mind blowing sex.

Just as she'd pulled herself out from underneath her, Brittany still mostly asleep murmured gently, "No leave." Santana was pretty certain that had she any intention of leaving the sheer cuteness of that would have broken her resolve.

"I'm not leaving. Just need to go to the bathroom," Santana said softly before pressing her lips into the girl's hair.

"Hurry back," she murmured again, "Miss you."

Yeah, that girl was a part of _no one's_ evil plot.

Just so that she wasn't actually lying to her, Santana did make use of the facilities and then proceeded to look for anything that could even begin to connect Brittany to Abstergo and the Templars. The medicine cabinet revealed nothing of interest: aspirin, Midol, birth control pills. Her search under the sink was a likewise fruitless effort, finding only cleaning products. She moved to the kitchen cabinets and found nothing of interest, and barely anything in the way of food.

Her laptop had a password on it and Santana was no hacker but knowing so much about the girl it didn't take long to figure out that the password was "Beyonce." However that didn't accomplish much either since there wasn't much to go on therein, just a lot of pictures of people that Santana recognized from the dance studio or an older couple that she guessed were Brittany's parents. There were some bank records but there was nothing damning in them either. Brittany looked to have a sizable nest egg that Santana wasn't entirely sure where she would have acquired it, but nothing outrageous.

Santana was just about ready to give up her search. She was about to chalk it up to one of the great unknowable mysteries of the universe, something that she would never understand. Just for the sake of being thorough she decided to search the closet. Opening the door revealed the closet to be much larger than she'd thought. It was a walk in. The open closet door had always obscured Santana's view of it when she was surveying Brittany. She never thought much of it. Taking in the view, Santana noticed that apparently the exception to Brittany's Spartan lifestyle was her wardrobe. Both sides of the closet were stuffed full of clothes. Large opaque plastic tubs lined the shelves overhead and shoes cluttered the floor.

She shoved hanging clothes to one side or the other to feel along the walls to search for a false wall. Finding nothing, she searched through shoes that were big enough to conceal anything and again came up empty.

The first two tubs nearest the door had coats and sweaters, scarves and mittens, her winter wear stored. The next tub she inspected had yearbooks and cheerleading trophies and various paraphernalia from some place called Lima in Ohio. The next one Santana initially thought had been empty but actually had stuffed animals in it, mostly cats and ducks. Tub number five had winter footwear.

Just when she'd began to think that this had all be a huge waste of time she grabbed the sixth and final tub off of the shelf. It was so tremendously heavy that she'd nearly dropped it. Inside she found lots and lots of medical records, all Brittany's. There were blood tests for every conceivable illness, stress tests, MRIs, cat scans, EEGs, ECGs, it was almost endless. There were multiples of all of them, one of everything about every month for over two years. Santana was far from a medical expert but as near as she could tell all of the tests looked normal so she was confused by the enormity of them.

In the very bottom of the tub she found two things of note: one was a diary with a pen still tucked inside and the other was a manila folder bearing the company logo of Abstergo Industries containing a confidentiality agreement and some other paperwork all signed by Brittany. None of it made much sense to Santana but she expected that since she wasn't an intelligence agent. One thing did jump out at her was the name Project: Morningstar. She'd found material related to this project in the homes of her last three targets...the last three people she'd killed. Now she was forced to wonder how many of her targets had been innocent.

**10:22 am EST, May 21st**

"You're gonna kill me?" Brittany said in disbelief more than fear.

"No, honey, I was _sent _here to kill you. You've been asleep for hours if I had any intention of killing you, then you'd have never woken up," Santana said.

Brittany with pleading in her eyes said, "San, this isn't funny. You shouldn't make jokes like this." She drew up on herself, knees tucked under her chin as she pushed herself back up towards the headboard." You...you can't be... This can't be true. You're not a bad person, I know you," Brittany was on the verge of full blown panic.

"I'm _not_ a bad person, mi preciosa, but I'm also not joking," Santana said careful to keep her voice level so as to excite the emotionally fragile girl. "I am a professional killer and someone very powerful did send me here to kill you."

"Y-y-you kill people?"

"Bad people, very bad people, and _only_ very bad people."

"I'M NOT A BAD PERSON!" Brittany bellowed before breaking out into tears.

Santana wanted to just wrap the girl up in her arms and hold her forever and reassure her that she knew that, but crowding her was probably a bad idea at the moment. Instead she just said, "I know you're not, sweetie. I know you're not."

"W-whoever sent you after me m-made a mistake," Brittany said.

"No," Santana said shaking her head, "he doesn't make mistakes, not like _this_ anyway."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that he _knew_ that you weren't a bad person and he sent me after you anyway," Santana replied, "I'm saying _he's_ a bad person, that he's corrupted the organization I've dedicated my life to serving. That's why I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you stay alive."

"Can't...can't you just leave and do that?"

Santana looked down and slowly shook her head before looking back up. "No, because he'll figure out that you aren't dead, have me killed, and then just send someone else to do the job," she said, "Someone who doesn't know the truth about you or just doesn't care enough to find out."

Brittany stared at her clearly unsure what to think about all of this. "So last night..."

"Was real," Santana said firmly, "I left a lot of things out, _obviously_, but nothing I said to you yesterday was a lie. Well, okay, I wasn't babysitting my niece and nephew the other day. I've actually never even met my sister's kids, but beyond that nothing was a lie."

"So your name is really Santana?"

She nodded. "Santana Christina Maria Lopez and you are now one of six living people who know that name."

"So you...and me?"

"I love you, Brittany. It wasn't a line to get in your pants. That connection that you said you felt to me? It was real and I feel it too. That's why am I about to go up against The Brotherhood to find out why they wanted me to kill an innocent woman."

"I don't know if I can trust you enough to love you back, Santana," Brittany said bluntly, "Everything I thought I knew about you is questionable at best and a huge lie at worst."

"Nothing was a lie, Britt," Santana said, "Some of it should have been. If you were just another assignment, I shouldn't have told you my real name and I shouldn't have gone on a date with you, and I definitely shouldn't have spent the night making love to you. If you need time to be able to trust me with your heart again, I understand, but it may become necessary in the very near future for you to trust me with your life without a second thought. Do you think you can do that? If nothing else can you trust that I don't want to see you hurt?"

"Yes," Brittany said softly.

"Okay," Santana said, "to get the Brotherhood off your back I need to know why they're so interested in you in the first place. Can you please tell me what you know about Abstergo and Project Morningstar?"

"Um, yeah," she said, "Can you put some clothes on first? Your body is really distracting."

Santana smiled. "I'm glad you think so," she said flirtily, "I just wanted you to know for certain that I didn't have anything concealed on me."

"I get it, San. I do," she said as she got back up from the bed and retrieved a robe from the bathroom and threw it to Santana. Brittany then went into the closet and came back a minute later wearing an oversized t-shirt. "I don't know what I can tell you about what you want to know. Three years ago I was studying dance at Juilliard and I was a million miles behind on my bills. I had scholarships for tuition but rent, food, heat, my part time job at a diner wasn't even close to enough to cover all of that. I started stripping a couple nights a week at an upscale place and did alright but then I heard about a clinical psychology study being done. I didn't have to take pills or do anything that might kill me and it paid $3,000 a session. I just had to spend twelve hours laying around while they watched me to pay my rent for almost four months. The lady that brought us in to the observation room said that they were who you said Abstergo Industries and that we were a part of a classified study called Morningstar that was supposed to help people with mental disabilities which made me think of this sweet girl Becky that I went to school with who had Down's Syndrome. That's it. That's all I know. I don't know what they were observing or why or even how."

"And you just went once?" Santana asked, "I mean, you've got records of medical exams every month for years…"

"No," Brittany said quickly cutting her off, "I went that first time and figured that was it, quick, really easy money to keep me afloat for a few months. Then about two months later they called me to ask if I would come back in. I asked if they were paying me again and they said sure so I did, and then about two weeks after that they said I was a 'good candidate' for their study and asked if I wanted to start coming in every day, they worked around my school schedule, they even bumped me up to $5,000 a day. Every day for nine months, I went in, they observed me, and by the time it was over I bought this apartment and my dance studio, paid off my credit cards, paid my parents back some money they'd loaned me, and still had more than enough to finish school. They insisted that I get a full battery of tests done by my doctor to make sure there weren't any side effects."

"And were there?"

"I don't know… I don't… I don't know if it's a side effect or…" Brittany stopped talking and took a calming breath before continuing, "Or if it was the effect the treatment was supposed to have. They never said what the study was supposed to do, and I mean they never even did anything to me. I laid on an observation table for hours at a time and then I left. How did that fix me?"

"Fix you how, honey? What did they fix?" asked Santana.

"Since the treatment, I've looked into it," Brittany began, "and I'm totally not a doctor or anything, but I think I had an undiagnosed developmental disorder. I was always really good at dancing and things that involved motor skills but I was terrible at mental things, what's the word cognitive skills? I mean I could barely use a computer. My grades in high school were terrible. Honestly, the only reason I graduated was because I was a cheerleader and my coach wouldn't let my teachers fail me. But these learning disabilities… they're supposed to be lifelong things. I shouldn't be cured."

"And they never gave you anything?" Santana asked. "No pills? What about drinks?"

"When they brought us drinks it was always sealed bottles of water," she replied, "I've been over it a million times, but then never did anything. I came in and lay down on an observation table with a clear plastic dome over my head for hours on end and then I left."

"Yeah, you're right," Santana confirmed. "That doesn't make any sense. There's no way that The Brotherhood wants you dead because you were cured of a mental disorder, and there's no way that Abstergo is dedicating that much money to something as altruistic as researching developmental disorders."

"Are you sure?"

"About what?"

"Are you sure that Abstergo are the bad guys?" Brittany asked. "I mean, you've been told forever that they are, but it looks like the people who told you that aren't really all that good either, so maybe they were lying about that too."

Santana shook her head with determination. "The Brotherhood may have been tainted… or who knows, maybe it was never as on the level as I was raised to believe, but I've seen with these two eyes the things that Abstergo does to people. They are not the good guys, honey. That's for sure."

Brittany said, "I have no idea what to be sure about anymore."

"That's…" Santana's reply was cut off by the sound of a key sliding into one of the lock on Brittany's front door. Her eyes shot to the door and then to Brittany. She whispered, "Does anyone else have a key to your place?" Brittany with wide eyes silently shook her head. Santana pointed past Brittany and said, "My purse." Brittany tossed the bag at Santana who was already up out of the chair by the window and heading for the door. She caught the bag as she heard Brittany's deadbolt come unlocked; the snap lock was already undone. The invader had only the doorknob left to undo. Santana quickly brandished the dagger that she'd brought with her last night. The dagger that was intended to be Brittany's end and the woman that was meant to kill her would now help to defend Brittany and her home; the irony wasn't lost on Santana.

When the doorknob clicked, the door pushed open and a familiar voice said, "Miss Pierce?" It was Sam, the flirty maintenance man, and before he knew what was going on, Santana grabbed him by the arm and slammed him roughly into a wall and then arm dragged him to the floor. He impacted the hardwood roughly with a grunt. He was clearly not expecting a confrontation. Santana moved to mount him putting all of her weight on his upper chest and pinning his arms out his sides with her knees.

She pressed his cheek to the floor facing away from Brittany and stuck the tip of her dagger against his Adam's apple and said, "You have exactly ten seconds to explain what the fuck you are doing barging into this apartment, you fish faced son of a bitch! After that, you're just a stain on the fucking floor for my detail man to deal with, so talk!"

"Firebrand," he said.

Santana's eyes went wide, "How the _FUCK_ do you know that name?"

"Barracuda," he said.

"You're Barracuda?" she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Protocol 22."

"Tadpole." Santana tossed the dagger aside and climbed off him. "Why are you still here?" he asked.

"What's going on?" asked Brittany still sitting stunned at the goings on of the last couple of minutes.

"Wait, she's still _alive_?" he asked as he stood up fully taking in his surroundings. "And you're wearing her robe? Aww, Jesus! You fucked her instead of doing your damn job? How fucking unprofessional can you get, Firebrand?"

"Okay, first of all," Santana said also standing up, "stop calling me that. I hate fucking codenames, so you're still Sam and you can all me Alexa. Secondly, if you ever question my professionalism again, you'll go back to the floor again and stay there. And finally, she's not dead because she's innocent. She's not an agent, she doesn't even work for Abstergo, she was just a human test subject for a while."

"Your boss messed up?"

"You're connected to the Brotherhood, _you _ever known him to mess something up this big?"

"He's dirty?" Sam asked.

"You tell me," Santana said, "You've undoubtedly been keeping tabs on Brittany like I have. She strike you as the global threat type to you?"

"Can someone please tell me what is going on?" Brittany asked.

"Sorry," Santana said, "Sam, here, is my detail man on this job and was on a couple of previous operations, too. He comes in after I've eliminated a target and makes sure it can't be traced back to me… or to anyone. He cleans up all trace evidence."

"So you kill people," Brittany said looking at Santana then looked over to Sam, "and you help her get away with it?"

"Bad people," Sam and Santana said in unison.

"So that night I invited you up for a drink," Brittany said to Sam, "is that why you said no?"

"Believe me, that is the _only_ reason," he said. "I wanted to say yes, but unlike some people, I am a professional."

Brittany said, "Sam, you can't blame, Alexa, she's in love with me."

"Really?" Sam said looking at Santana, "You went there to get laid?"

"No, it's true," Santana countered, "I know it's a total cliché. Killer falls for the target but it fucking happened."

"So are you guys running?"

"Not until we need to," Santana said, "and unless you're planning on reporting us to The Brotherhood, I can shine them on for another week or so which should be long enough to figure out what Il Maestro wants her dead for which sound be sufficient dirt to get him to leave her alone."

Sam shook his head looking at the floor. "You don't have a week."

"Damnit, you reported in to your handler?"

"I'm sorry," Sam said, "If I'd known about her and you guys… I-I'll tell them that I was wrong. That it wasn't you, that the job hasn't been carried out yet."

"No," Santana said, "that'll just provoke too many questions. You'll end up in front of an intelligence team, and honestly, I don't trust you not to crack for them. Hell, I don't trust myself not to crack for them. Brittany, honey, that time I was telling you about where you'd have to trust me without question? It's here a lot sooner than I thought it would be. Please go pack, essentials only. Comfortable clothes and shoes, anything you _absolutely_ can't live without. If you have any cash stuck around here anywhere get that too."

True to her word, Brittany listened and went to do as asked only saying, "Okay."

When she was gone, Santana turned to Sam and said, "I need to know why you're helping us. I need to know that I can trust you not to sell us out to the Brotherhood."

"Because you're right," Sam said, "she's not a part of any plot to take over the world. You're not the only one to be charmed by her. And let's just say that my air of professionalism wasn't always so, and you aren't the only one to cross a line that The Brotherhood disapproved of."

"You fell for a target too?"

"Not a target," Sam said, "An assassin. I've got some cash if you need it."

"I could use a favor more. Do you know a reliable forger who's not connected to the Brotherhood at all?"

"Yeah," he said, "there's a guy down in Middletown, New Jersey, goes by Puck. He should be able to help you out."

"Puck, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream?"

"Knowing him it's more likely a hockey reference. When you talk to him, he knows me as Evan." Santana nodded in understanding. "What should I report back about this?" he asked pointing to the room around him.

Santana looked around and sighed. "Don't lie," she said, "but be _extremely_ stingy with the truth. Say that you saw me in the building and assumed the mission was a go. You entered the target's apartment the next morning and found no dead body, which is the truth. Tell them you went forward with the detail job in the room just to be sure. Actually do the detail work… just to be sure. And say that you await notification of further need of your services. That should keep you in the clear and in The Brotherhood's good graces."

"Thanks, Alexa."

"I'm pretty sure I'm the one that should be thanking you, Sam. You're pretty much a prince," Santana said.

"Then do me a favor," he said, "you familiar with an assassin named Ladybird?" Santana just shook her head. "Okay, so this is a long shot, but if you ever encounter her tell her that Barracuda said I'm lucky to have been where I have been. Say it just like that, okay?"

"Okay, will do," Santana said. Brittany emerged from her closet with one very large, very heavy duffel bag slung across her shoulder and one smaller bag in hand. "You ready?" Santana asked gathering her clothes from last night.

"As I'll ever be."


	4. Exfiltration

**Disclaimer: I own neither Glee nor any part thereof. No money is being made off of this story and is intended only for entertainment purposes; therefore it falls within the parameters of "Fair Use"**

**A/N: I know, I know, I suck. Almost three months since I last updated. I offer my most profuse apologies, but I just had too many stories going all at once and opted to start finishing them one at a time. There are probably going to be two more chapters after this one. Thanks to everyone who has stuck with this story.**

**Chapter 4**

**Exfiltration**

The girls vacated Brittany's apartment with Sam's promise that he wouldn't touch more than he had to. Santana didn't have high hopes for Brittany ever being able to come back to it but it seemed important for Brittany to believe that she could so Sam promised. Santana punched the contact information for this Puck character into her phone and they were on their way. After a bit of convincing Santana finally managed to talk Brittany into letting her carry the big bag.

Santana said that she needed to collect her gear before they went anywhere else. Brittany understood, but when they crossed the street into the neighboring building and the doorman greeted her as Miss Vargas, Brittany started looking a little freaked out once again. Santana saw this and quickly led her into the elevator. "I know this is all really weird for you, Brittany. It's entirely unfair for me to expect you to just roll with all of this and I'm sorry for that. If I could make your life go back to what it was a month ago, I would do it in a heartbeat."

"A month?" Brittany asked.

"That's when I got assigned to you," Santana said, "Minus a couple days to travel and set up, that's how long I've been watching you, following you. I know, I just keep upping the creepiness quotient with you, again I'm sorry, and once we're clear of this if you never want to see me ever again then I'll understand."

Brittany seemed to consider this for a while before she said, "Why so long?"

"Do what?" Santana said.

"Do you always follow people for that long before you… before…?"

"Usually not, no," Santana said.

"Then why me?"

Santana debated whether or not she should let Brittany follow this line of thought, but ultimately decided that she'd lied to her enough for one lifetime. If she stood any chance of re-earning Brittany's trust and love which she desperately wanted, then she'd have to be brutally honest about every horrible thing she wanted to know. "We're… we assassins are trained to find the patterns in peoples' lives. Learn where they go and what they do and when. We figure out where we know they will be and where they feel safe, where they'll let their guard down. You don't have a pattern to your life. You are utterly unpredictable. To be terribly honest, it was more than a little frustrating at the time."

"I'm sorry," Brittany said.

"Fuck! Don't be sorry, honey," Santana said, "If you were easier to track, I might have…" The very thought of the end of that sentence made Santana's heart hurt, "I might not have figured out that you were a clean target."

"Clean target is a codeword for something isn't it?" Brittany said. Technically it was a question but she really already knew the answer.

"Yeah," Santana said, "It means you aren't an agent of The Templars. It… it means you're an innocent, not a valid target of The Brotherhood."

"San," Brittany sighed out her name, "if you ever want there to ever be a chance of anything happening between us ever again, then the first thing I need is for you to deprogram or whatever. Stop using code words to distance yourself from what you do. You're a professional killer. That's what you are, that's what you do. You kill people for money. I am not a target. I am a person with a name and a job and friends and a family who would be very, very hurt if I turned up mysteriously dead. Don't say 'dispatch' or 'eliminate'. Don't say 'target'. Accept yourself for what you are, Santana."

The doors opened onto the sixteenth floor of the building. Santana's building was significantly older than Brittany's and was build decades ago when silly superstitious people thought it was bad luck to have a thirteenth floor, so the sixteenth floor of her building lined up with the fifteenth floor of Brittany's building. Santana led them out of the lift and into the hall towards her apartment. Santana keyed their way in and as soon as the door was shut Santana looked at Brittany and said, "You're right. I know you're right, and I promise you that I'm trying to work on it, but I'm fighting twenty years of training, okay?"

"Okay," Brittany said as she began to move across the room. Santana did likewise quickly starting to stow her gear. "How did you get the assignment to kill me?"

"Intel dead drop," Santana said, "A courier, probably someone with no connection to The Brotherhood whatsoever, was paid handsomely to take a sealed envelope and leave it in a pre-arranged location, in this case in a locker in a marina in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Five minutes after he made the drop, that is after he put the envelope in the locker, our intel guys, intelligence gatherers that look in on everything, some of the best computer hackers in the world, they told my boss and I got a text message that to anyone else would look like a bunch of gibberish, but since I knew the code, I knew it was telling me to go to that locker."

"Where were you when the text came in?" Brittany interrupted.

"As luck would have it I was enjoying some downtime in Cabo San Lucas," Santana said, "Other times I've had to fly halfway around the world to pick up my assignments… my… to find out who I am supposed to kill. So I catch a plane and pick up the envelope and inside…" Santana trailed off stopped packing up her gear and got into a nearby table drawer. She pulled out a manila file folder with Brittany's name on the tab, walked back to Brittany, and handed it to her. "Inside the envelope was this dossier on you."

Brittany flipped the folder open and began looking through it and found a half dozen pictures of her, a brief list of facts about her, height, weight, hair color, eye color, date of birth, Social Security Number, address, an out-of-date phone number, and a code. "What does 'Status: Delta Six' mean?" Brittany asked.

Santana said, "That's the code that told me that I was supposed to kill you. If it had said 'Tango Fourteen' instead, then it would have meant that I should have tracked you and reported my findings and then my bosses would have told me whether or not you should be eli… whether or not they wanted me to kill you." Brittany just nodded and pointedly didn't say anything before getting up and walking from the living room to the bathroom.

It took every last bit of resolve she had not to follow her in there and try to comfort her, Santana knew that all of this was rough on Brittany, knew that she was in the process of turning Brittany's life upside down. She figured that the best thing she could do was give her some space so that Brittany could wrap her head around everything that had been dumped on her in the last hour. Santana went to her bedroom and began packing everything in the closet and the surveillance gear that she had in there. After five minutes, she was almost done when she realized she was still wearing the clothes that she'd worn last night on her date with Brittany, so she quickly pulled out something a little more flexible than skin tight jeans and a sweater.

She was in the process of stripping off her dirty clothes when Brittany walked in and quickly said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I should have knocked."

She turned to leave the room, but Santana said, "It's okay. Come in. I'm not terribly shy and you've seen it all before anyway." Brittany turned back to face Santana again and slowly drifted through the room, past Santana to the window and stared out at her apartment across the street. She just looked for a little while, watching the shape that she knew to be Sam moving around her apartment. "Why not just shoot me from here?"

"Is the glass in your window bulletproof?" Santana asked having finished dressing while Brittany was looking out across the street.

"I have no idea," Brittany said.

"I don't either," Santana said, "and even if it's not I don't know how thick it is. There's not much between the buildings to gauge wind speed or direction. Sharpshooting is extremely complicated and while I have been trained to do it, I'm not exceptionally good at it. Beyond that, I don't really like guns all that much. They're loud, they're messy, and they're unreliable. We were trained to make clean kills. No witnesses, no evidence, and no collateral damage. Even if our clean-up guys like Sam could get the bullet itself out of a body, bullet holes can be evidence. Some assassins use guns but I don't. The only one I own is an antique that doesn't work."

"How many…" Brittany trailed off her question and was silent for a couple more minutes. Santana was pretty sure she knew which question was coming next and she wasn't really looking forward to answering it. "How many people have you killed?" Yep, that was the question that Santana wasn't eager to answer, mostly because of the can of worms that would follow it, but she owed Brittany the truth.

"Thirty one," she said softly.

She expected Brittany to wince or to walk out of the room or to call her a horrible monster or all of the above but she didn't. All she did was just ask the next question Santana was expecting, "How many of them were like me? How many innocent people have you killed?"

Santana took in and released a long, slow deep breath and said, "I honestly don't know, honey. It's something that's been on my mind all morning, ever since I put things together about you and Il Maestro. I wish I could honestly tell you that you were the only innocent person I've ever been sent after but you're the fourth consecutive person that was connected to Project: Morningstar. I know one of them was an agent for Abstergo but the other two..." Santana shook her head sadly, "There's every real possibility that I've murderer two innocent men, maybe more, if anyone not connected to Morningstar was innocent as well. I know it's not the answer you want to hear. It's not the one I want to give, because… and I want to make a distinction here. It may not mean anything to you and I get that, but it means something to me."

"Okay," Brittany said.

"I've never, _ever_ killed anyone for money. I'm not some evil soulless hit man that just takes contracts and kills whomever as long as the money is good. I mean, yeah, I'm extremely well compensated by The Brotherhood for what I do, but it was never about the money. The people I killed, I genuinely believed that I was making the world a better place by taking them out of it." The volume of her voice was slowly rising so she took another long breath to try to steady herself out. It didn't work. "The things that Abstergo, The Templars, and their agents stand for and do to people, Brittany they're fucking monsters!"

"Okay," Brittany said quickly, "Santana, calm down, all right? You're scaring me."

Santana took a deep breath and quickly apologized, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she said, "I just…"

Brittany closed the distance between them and put hand on Santana's shoulder and brought Santana down to sit on the bed. Brittany slid her hand across Santana's back and pulled her into a side hug. It was the first physical contact they'd had since Brittany had woken up that morning. Santana had been determined to let Brittany re-initialize contact between them, but as soon as she had Santana reached up to cover Brittany's hand with her own. "It's something personal between you and them," Brittany said, "isn't it? You don't get that upset at someone because you were trained to. They did something to you, didn't they or someone you care about?" Santana nodded. "You want to tell me about it?"

"It's pretty gruesome," Santana said.

"I'd like to know," Brittany said, "because right now I still don't know where I stand on the whole Assassins/Templars thing. If you explained to me what they did to make you hate them so much, maybe I'd understand why you're so sure they're so evil."

"Okay," Santana said. She took another deep calming breath before continuing, "In my line of work, you don't have a lot of friends. I was born into this life, not all of us are, but I was. My father is a member of The Brotherhood and I grew up in it. I mean, becoming an assassin myself was a choice that I made, but growing up in it there's not a lot of opportunities to make friends. I had a few when I was little but we all kind of drifted apart as we got older… all except for one. I have one honest to fuck friend in this miserable stinking world and… and they fucking crippled him... on purpose."

"On purpose? Are you sure?"

Santana nodded determinedly, "Yeah, this sadistic fucker name Smythe found his safe house… I have _no_ fucking clue how but he found him. He slipped in while Abe was sleeping and stabbed him the goddamn back, right at the base of his spine, right here," Santana pointed at the same spot on her own back. "Then… then the son of a bitch grabs towels and shit to staunch the bleeding and calls an ambulance before he runs out. The sick fucker wanted Ar…Abe to live through it, and he did, paralyzed from the waist down. Everyone I've ever killed, I killed as quickly and painlessly as possible, even when they deserved worse. Unlike them I don't _like_ hurting people." Santana sighed deeply. "He wasn't even an assassin. He's in intelligence."

"You said he lived," Brittany said, "Is he still alive?"

"Yeah," Santana said off handedly, "He's not _with_ The Brotherhood anymore but…"

Santana stared at Brittany for a minute before Brittany said, "What?"

"He's not with _The Brotherhood_ anymore," she repeated excitedly, "Brittany, you are a genius! Abe's the best computer hacker I've ever met. He can help us figure out what the hell Morningstar is." Santana sprung back to her feet then bent over to kiss Brittany on the top of the head. She immediately realized what she did and quickly mumbled, "Sorry. I-I wasn't thinking."

"It's okay," Brittany said. Santana quickly retrieved her laptop and booted it up. Brittany watched as Santana brought up a website that seemed to be for a medical supply company. Santana scrolled to the bottom of the site and brought up the Contact Page and again scrolled all the way to the bottom and clicked on the very last email address. This prompted a command box that said _My Old Password is Out of Date_. In the reply box Santana replied _The New One is Different_, and then a blank e-mail field appeared on screen. Santana quickly filled in a reply e-mail address and in the subject line she typed Sic Semper Tyrannis. She quickly filled in the message box with idle chitchat about going to the grocery store and to the gym and signed it, "Hope to hear from you soon, Mac." Followed by the phone number of her burner phone.

"Okay, so I'm really lost now," Brittany said, "What did any of that mean?"

"The body of the message was just filler," she said, "The only important parts were the subject line which is a call and response that he'll find and the name Mac, because Mac is what he calls me in front of other people."

"In front of other people? So in private he calls you Santana? Is he one of the six people who know your real name?"

"Yeah," Santana said, "You, him, my dad, my sister, and couple of other childhood friends."

"Your mom?"

"Died a long time ago," Santana said.

"Was she…"

"Ovarian cancer," Santana answered before she could really be asked, "and I'll answer anything else you want to know but we need to get out of here. We've stayed too long already. Sam's going to be done over there soon and then The Brotherhood's going to be looking for us. We need to get in touch with this Puck person and get you a new identity and then we need to get to my safe house." The girls took their bags and piled them by the front door. "Stay right here," Santana said as she pulled a hair band and a pair of latex gloves out of one of her bags. She pulled the gloves on and quickly tied her hair up. Next she pulled a cloth out of the bag and started meticulously wiping down everything in the apartment that either of them had touched. When she was done, Santana stuck the cloth and the gloves back in her bag as Brittany just watched perplexed. "Wiping down the room, trying to cover our tracks," Santana said, "The longer we stay off their radar the better. If I had time to vacuum, I would, but I don't."

**X **

A brand new silver 2012 Audi A8 pulled to a stop in front of Brittany. She opened the back door and started loading their bags into it as Santana came around to help. "This is a really nice car," she said staring at it, "I never really had much interest in cars because I don't know how to drive, but this one is really awesome looking."

"Come on, get in," Santana said opening the front passenger side door, "Let's go for a spin."

The girls loaded in and Santana slowly made her way out into traffic and began navigating them uptown which Brittany quickly took note. "Aren't we supposed to be headed to Jersey? Why are we going uptown?"

"I've got a safe house up here," Santana said, "We need to drop off our stuff and pick up some cash I've got squirreled away. Puck didn't say what the paper was going to cost."

"Paper?"

"Oh right," Santana said shaking her head slightly, "He's going to make you a new identity. The Brotherhood is going to be looking for Brittany Susan Pierce so we have to give you a new ID and a new name."

"Oh, yeah," Brittany said, "I guess that makes sense." She stared out the window as Santana drove looking at nothing in particular apparently lost in thought. Santana was determined to give her all the emotional space she needed since she couldn't give her physical space. "It's strange," Brittany said after about fifteen minutes, "I've walked and ridden all over this city for years so I recognize landmarks but it seems entirely different now, like something's changed."

"I'm gonna venture a guess and say that me throwing Sam around this morning was the first time someone has ever done anything like that in your presence before," Santana said as she pulled into a pay parking lot. She quickly gave the attendant some money and went in search of a spot.

"Sort of, how did you know?"

"What you were saying about the world being different, it's a common reaction for people who have never been near violence before and are suddenly exposed to it." Brittany nodded slowly in understanding but Santana was sure she really did. "It scared you this morning when I fought with Sam, didn't it?"

"Yes," Brittany said.

"Because you've never seen anything like that before?"

"Not exactly," Brittany said, "I mean I've never watched two people fight before but mostly it scared me because of what happened to my friend Kurt from high school."

"What happened to Kurt?" Santana asked.

"You know I grew up in a city called Lima, Ohio, right?" Santana nodded. "Well, Lima wasn't a very good place to be a gay teenager and Kurt was really gay, like couldn't hide it if he wanted to kind of gay. There was this meathead football player named Dave," Santana knew where this was headed. "He... hurt him really bad."

"Is Kurt okay? He didn't...?"

"He's still alive and out in San Francisco," Brittany said.

"Good," Santana said, "That's good. I'm sorry that that happened to your friend. No one deserves that, but there's a difference in what that football player did and what I do and I want to make sure you know what that is."

"Anger?"

"Rage, actually," Santana said, "Uncontrolled, uncontrollable anger. Almost all gay bashers have rage issues. I don't. I may feel anger when I'm fighting someone but it's never in control of me. I always control it. It's something I've been trained to do since I was very young. If something happens and I get into a fight with someone, you don't have to be afraid of me. I will _never_ hurt you, Brittany, not ever."

"I believe you," Brittany said, "I'm not sure why, but I do."

Santana smiled slightly at what she thought was great news. She wasn't exactly sure what she should say to that so she didn't respond to it. "Are you hungry?" she asked instead. "We should probably eat since we missed breakfast."

"I don't have much of an appetite," Brittany replied.

"I understand," Santana said, "After everything I've put you through this morning, I get it, but you should still try to eat something. If we have to start running, you'll need to keep your strength up."

"We aren't running now?" Brittany asked.

"No," Santana said, "Right now we've just gone to ground. If we start running we'll get out of the city and as far away from anywhere as we can get." Brittany didn't reply. "C'mon, let's get some food. It'll make you feel better. There's a Chinese place just up the block. I think you'll like." She still didn't respond but she attempted a smile which Santana took as an okay.

** X**

Santana hated New Jersey. Everything there felt dirty and gross and this was from a woman who had spent a considerable amount of time in underworld of Singapore. They were standing outside the apartment they'd been instructed to come to. "Look I don't know this guy," she said to Brittany, "I don't know if we can trust him or what, so please do me a favor and don't talk to him unless he asks you a question directly, and even then don't tell him anything about yourself, okay?"

"Okay," Brittany said softly.

Santana knocked gently. A voice from inside said, "Just a second." A moment later they heard locks being unlocked and the door came open as far as the chain would allow. "You Alexa?" He asked. He had tan skin and dark hair. His lack of a shirt showed toned muscles and a couple of shitty looking tattoos.

"You The Puck?"

"It's just Puck," he said, "no 'the'. You got the green?" Santana produced a roll of hundreds from her pocket. Puck smiled, closed the door long enough to release the chain before opening it wide and ushering the girls in. "Offer you ladies a drink? I got everything."

"Just what we came after," Santana said.

"Okay," he said, "Let's lift em up and we'll take some pictures then you can be on your way."

Brittany looked to Santana for clarification. "He wants us to lift our shirts up and turn around to show him that we aren't wearing wires. It's okay," Santana said looking deep into Brittany's eyes, "because he's going to put that camera back down until we're done." Brittany looked over to find Puck trying to palm a small camera. Santana looked at him and said, "I see everything, so don't try anything. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah," he said setting the camera down. Santana lifted her shirt to her armpits and quickly turned in a circle. Puck looked to Brittany and said, "You too, Blondie."

"San, I need your help," Brittany whispered.

"What's up?

"I didn't put a bra on this morning and I really don't want this creep to see my boobs," she said.

"Alright," Santana said walking to stand behind Brittany, "You cover them up. I'll lift the shirt." Brittany nodded and slipped her hands up under her loose blouse. Santana reached around Brittany's waist and gathered up the hem of her shirt and suddenly she was overwhelmed by the scent of Brittany once again. It took all of her emotional control to keep herself in check. "Ready?" Brittany nodded again and Santana lifted the shirt, her knuckles grazed lightly over Brittany's flawless skin, again testing her control.

"I love my job," Puck said.

Santana dropped the shirt and glared at him. "Can get what we came for now?"

"Yeah, sure thing," he said, "Are either of you cops?"

"That's a pointless question," Santana said, "because cops don't have to answer it honestly. What police officers _can't_ do is ask you to commit a crime, so will you go forge government documents for us, please?" She once again produced the roll of money.

"It's 600 for the ID, a grand for the passport, all up front," he said.

"Not a fucking chance. I don't know if you think we're stupid, or if you're trying to impress us with how big a man you _think_ you are, but whatever you're doing, stop because it's not going to work. We're not impressed," Santana said as she unrolled the bills, "Because we're in a hurry, here's 800, that's half. You'll get the rest when I'm sure that you've done quality work. If you haven't done quality work, then I'll be taking that half back and if you don't think I can do that then I would tell you to call you buddy Evan and ask him what I'm capable of."

Santana held out the offered cash which Puck grumbled about but ultimately took. "Okay, let's do photos," he said, "and I need a name."

"It should be something that you'll respond to reflexively. Usually, it's best to stick to things similar to your real name, or some version of your middle name. You could be Sue."

"No," Brittany responded quickly, "In high sc…" she glanced at Santana, remembering her earlier warning about personal details, "Not Sue," she said, "Make the name Miranda, Miranda Cooney."

"Okay," Puck said having retrieved his camera, "Let your hair down. Can't have your hair up in a passport photo."

Puck snapped a few pictures until he was sure he had one that would be acceptable and disappeared into one of the rooms in the back. "Miranda?" Santana questioned as they both took a seat on the couch to wait.

"It was my princess name when I was little," she said, "My best friend, Tina and me use to play princesses all the time. Her name was Mariposa and mine was Miranda. Cooney was my grandmother's last name."

"Will you tell me about the adventures of Miranda and Mariposa?"

"Maybe," Brittany said, "but first I want you to tell me something about you, something true."

"Okay, fair enough," Santana said, "I, uh, I speak five languages, I have a decent understanding of two more, I have three black belts, I'm proficient with most all sharp or blunt weapons…"

"Those are just facts," Brittany said, "Tell me something about you, like I did… something about how you grew up."

Santana sat back, took in and released a long slow breath, and said, "Okay, but not here. I don't trust this guy. There could be listening devices around here."

"Okay, well, just don't forget or you'll never know about all the magical times Mariposa and Miranda had together," Brittany said settling back on the couch as well. They sat in silence for a few minutes before Brittany spoke again. "Am I ever going to get to go back to my life?"

"Brittany, since you woke up this morning, I've been 100% honest with you on every single thing you've asked me. I'm not going to change that now," Santana said, "If it is within my power to put your life back together, I will, but I don't want you getting your hopes too far up. Even if I can get The Brotherhood off your back, it may be necessary for you to change your name, move, break off ties to your old life. I know that's not what you want to hear but I won't lie to you anymore."

As was quickly becoming commonplace, Brittany just nodded and they resumed sitting in silence. Finally after about twenty minutes, she leaned her head over to rest on Santana's shoulder and soon after her rhythmic breathing told Santana that Brittany had fallen asleep. Santana rested her cheek against the top of Brittany's head and said softly, "I love you."


	5. Gathering Intel

**Disclaimer: I own neither Glee nor any part thereof. No money is being made off of this story and is intended only for entertainment purposes; therefore it falls within the parameters of "Fair Use"**

**A/N: Sorry for the delay but I was really, horribly blocked for a couple weeks. That seems to have cleared up. This story gets longer every time I write a chapter so as of now I'm officially done trying to predict how many more chapters there are. Hope everyone is still enjoying.**

**Chapter 5**

**Gathering Intel**

They were still waiting for Puck to finish his work, well Santana was waiting, Brittany was asleep her head slumped on Santana's shoulder, when Santana phone chirped. Santana hadn't been expecting it. The front room of Puck's place had been silent as the grave for over two hours now, so when the notification came it would have startled most people. Santana wasn't most people, but in this respect, Brittany was.

She suddenly jerked awake while Santana was retrieving her phone. "Sorry," Brittany said softly.

Santana smiled and said, "It's okay. I'm sorry the phone woke you."

"It's okay," Brittany said, "I don't really want to sleep in this guy's place. I'm afraid that I'll wake up tied up in his basement or something."

"You don't have to worry about that," Santana said, "I learned a long time ago how to size up a threat, to tell how hard it would be for me to win a fight against someone and this guy wouldn't take much effort. I know you have no reason to, but you can trust me with your safety."

"Who was calling?" Brittany asked changing the subject.

"It was a text message from Abe," Santana said, "He's the only one other than you who had this phone number."

"You're not going to read it?"

"Not here," she said. Brittany looked at her confused. Santana clarified, "I don't trust this guy. I have no idea if he's set up to intercept cell signals or what, so I don't want him knowing my business. Abe will just have to wait."

He didn't have to wait much longer however as about twenty minutes later Puck came back out into the front room with Brittany's newly minted bogus IDs in hand. Santana stood to meet him and Brittany followed suit. "Let me see them."

"Money first," he said.

"You'll get the money when I'm sure you've done quality work and not a second sooner," Santana said quickly snatching the driver's license and passport out of his hand. She inspected them in great detail.

"They're top notch fakes, babe," he said earning him a nasty glare from both Santana and Brittany, "but fair warning though. They're just cosmetic. If they get run through a database, they won't hold up."

"Not an issue," Santana said still looking at them. Eventually she pulled another roll of hundreds and tossed it to him without a word. She handed the forgeries to Brittany and said, "Alright, Miranda, we've got things to do."

"Hey, hold up," Puck said, "You lovely ladies want to stick around for a couple of hours? There's gonna be an awesome party later on with some killer weed, maybe some ecstasy. Maybe get a little loose, have a little fun?"

"I think I'll have my fun when we're back on the other side of the bridge," Santana said.

"Too bad," Puck shrugged and pointed at Brittany's documentation, "Anybody asks, you didn't get that here."

"Of course we didn't," Santana replied, "I never go to New Jersey."

**X**

When they were about ten minutes removed from Puck's and about fifteen minutes away from the bridge back to Manhattan, Santana pulled out her cell and handed it to Brittany. "Check the message would you?"

Brittany tapped the phone a couple of times before scrunching her face in confusion. "It's just a jumble of letter and numbers and symbols," she said, "Is it some sort of code?"

"Not exactly," Santana replied, "It's encrypted. Hit reply and type #4471. Then hit send. It should bounce back with the actual message."

Brittany did as instructed and the phone chimed again. "Okay, now it says, 'Concrete jungle where dreams are made. Cruising to my stash spot.' And then there's this long number."

"Does it start with 1241?" Santana asked.

"Yeah," Brittany said.

"It's an encrypted phone number," Santana said, "I have no idea what the rest of it means, though."

"The concrete jungle part?" Brittany clarified.

"Yeah, It's probably some sort of riddle," Santana said off handedly, "or maybe a code."

"They're song lyrics," Brittany said, "'Empire State of Mind' by Jay Z and Alicia Keys."

"Don't know it," Santana said, "How does it go? What are the next lines?"

"After 'Concrete jungle where dreams are made' comes 'Let's hear it for New York'."

"Okay," Santana said, "he's telling us that he knows we're in New York. The other line should reference a landmark of some sort."

"Not a landmark," Brittany said, "An address, 560 State Street. That's the line that comes next. Is that where Abe's at?"

"Nah, it won't be that easy to get to him," Santana said, "If I'm guessing right, then there's a payphone somewhere in the vicinity of whatever's at that address that I'm supposed to call him from. What is at 560 State Street?"

"I don't know," Brittany said, "I don't even know where that is."

"The phone has internet access," Santana said.

Brittany punched a few more buttons. She stuck her tongue between her lips as she waited. "It's the Brooklyn Academy of Music. My friends Mike and Tina live in Brooklyn. Crap, if I'm gonna disappear for a while I need to call Mike so he can take over running the studio."

"That's not a good idea," Santana said.

"I know," Brittany said, "but we're trying to lay low, right?" Santana nodded. "Well, if I don't show up and don't call in for a day or two, they'll just think that I'm, well, just being me, but more than that and they'll get worried and call the police and my parents and then there will be a missing person report, but if I call them and tell them that I met someone and we're going off to like Paris or wherever, then we'll have a couple of weeks at least before they start to think something is up."

"That's a really good idea," Santana said, "but let's go talk to Abe first. Then we can swing by a Costco or something and pick up some disposable cell phones, but when you talk to them be less specific. Don't say that we're going to Paris. Say we're going on a road trip. Flying to Paris usually involves flying back and friends want to volunteer to drop you off and pick you up, which means departure and arrival times. Road trips are a little more, 'See you when you get back.'"

"That's smart," Brittany said, "Will you tell me about you now? You said you would."

"I didn't forget," Santana said. "I grew up on a farm."

"Really?"

"Well," Santana said, "it was more of a plantation, really. We raised chickens and grew tobacco, or well, the people that actually worked on the plantation did. I just lived there."

"Where at?"

"Nowhere you've ever heard of," Santana said, "It's in Taza Province in Morocco, about 20 miles outside the city of Oulad Zbair."

"You're right, I've never heard of that," Brittany said, "so you're not American, then?"

"I don't have a nationality," Santana said, "I was born in Morocco but the Moroccan government has no documentation of that. My mother is Spanish so technically I'm a citizen of the European Union but I've never applied for any legal status there. My father was born in the Dominican Republic but there's no proof of that either."

"But you're still not telling me about you," Brittany said.

"I was getting there," Santana said, "You wanted to know something real about me, well here it is. My favorite place in the whole world is that plantation because there's this lake there that's absolutely the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It's clear and it's blue and it's warm there like ten months out of the year so you could swim in it all the time. There were four kids around our age that grew up on there, me and Abe, a Filipino girl named Sunny, and the girl we called Big Mouth Berry because she was such a tattle tale, and I honestly think we spent more time as kids in that lake than we did out of it. Now, whenever I have downtime I find the biggest, blue-est body of water I can find and I swim and try to remember simpler times."

Santana glanced over to find Brittany smiling brightly… the kind of smile that she'd worn all day the previous month, and Santana immediately felt guilty for taking that away from her and from the world. Brittany should always be smiling, Santana thought.

"Thank you for telling me that," Brittany said, "It helps me to remember that you are that person that I fell for and not just this scary, killer woman."

Santana wanted to quiz her on her use of the word scary but she'd rather keep the mood light for the time being, so she just smiled at Brittany and said, "Anything to keep that beautiful smile on your face, honey." Brittany didn't reply just continued to smile at her. "A deal's a deal," Santana said, "I believe I was promised tales of Miranda and Mariposa."

"Oh, right," Brittany replied, "Once upon a time, there were two beautiful princesses…"

** X**

An hour later they had made their fifth circuit of the neighborhood of their destination, and now Santana was certain. There was no pay phone on the street anywhere on the same block as The Brooklyn Academy of Music. However, up the block and across Flatbush Avenue was The Atlantic Terminal, a bus station, which almost certainly had a bank of payphones inside. She also made note of the abundance of Toyotas and Hondas and Fords, most of which were at least a few years old. Not a lot of brand new Audis on the streets. "We need to ditch this car," she said as she parked along the curb a hundred yards down from the bus station.

"But I like your car," Brittany said, "Plus it had to be really expensive. We're just going to abandon it?"

"It's not my car, honey," Santana said.

"What?"

"It belongs to the guy who lives in the above my apartment," Santana said, "He's some jet-setting businessman. He's been out of town for over a week now, so I knew he wouldn't miss it, but it stands out around here and in the neighborhood around the safe house."

"You stole it?" Brittany asked.

"Yeah, Britt, I did," she said, "but we'll leave it in a tow away zone so that when he gets back and reports it stolen, the cops will already know where it's at." Brittany sat silently staring at Santana. "What?" she asked Brittany.

Brittany shook her head, "Nothing, it's stupid."

"Hey, look at me," Santana said when Brittany's gaze dropped, "Look at me," she repeated and Brittany complied. "Your feelings aren't stupid to me and they shouldn't be to you, so please tell me what you were feeling just then."

"I don't know, it's kinda weird, like I know that you kill people and I watched you beat up Sam, but he was breaking in so you were just doing that to defend me."

"It's different, isn't it?" Santana asked, "Knowing I break the law and actually seeing me do it. It's one thing for me to tell you but something else for you to witness it, just like it was weird to see me fighting with Sam." Brittany nodded but didn't say anything. "I feel like a broken record. I know this is really weird for you and under ideal circumstances I'd give you some alone time to sort things out but..."

"It's not safe for me to be left alone," Brittany said.

Santana nodded. She was glad that Brittany seemingly understood the direness of the situation, a lot of people in her place wouldn't. "Let's go make this phone call, then maybe we'll have a chance for us to slow down for a few minutes and maybe you'll have a chance to think for a bit."

Brittany nodded silently again and opened her door. Santana did likewise and they walked casually down State Street toward the bus station. Brittany, seemingly on instinct kept close to Santana which Santana was thankful for. She would have held Brittany close had she needed to but she was glad that it hadn't become necessary to manhandle her.

They waited semi-patiently to cross Flatbush Avenue and then hustled into the station. Quickly locating the nearest payphone, Santana pulled out her phone to locate the number. "I'll hold the phone where we both can hear. You probably won't understand a lot of what gets said. Abe will talk in code and expect me to do the same. I promise to explain it all later." Brittany nodded and Santana quickly dialed the contact number. There was a quick double beep indicating that the line was encrypted. Someone on the other end picked up but didn't speak. "Good morning, Sunshine," Santana said.

"So we have an audience," Abe said, "Predator or prey?"

"Neither, it's a Costner/Houston situation," Santana said, hoping he got the reference. They didn't exactly have a code for 'I was sent to kill an innocent person and am now protecting her.'

"And you need to come in?"

"Yeah," Santana said, "ASAP."

"Can you dig in for a bit?"

"A _little_ bit," she said, "Not too long. The status quo will deteriorate exponentially."

"Alright, do like we did in Tangiers and then make for the home of the midnight rider," Abe said.

"Message received," said Santana, "Are you still Eeyore?"

"Couple from our side," he said, "Haven't caught a whiff yet, but that's just a matter of time."

"Okay," Santana said, "Keep me abreast of any changes in your status."

"May the odds be ever in your favor," Abe said.

Brittany caught the reference and smiled. Santana chuckled, smiled, and said, "You're such a nerd." They hung up and the girls went back to the Audi so that Santana could wipe it down. She put the keys in the center console and locked the door. It would be towed in the morning and her former neighbor would have it back in pristine condition as soon as he came back to town.

They caught a train back to the safe house because Brittany preferred trains to buses. They found a car that was sparsely populated and they sat away from the few people that were there. "So the plan with, Abe?"

"The plan with Abe..."

"I think I know what some of it meant," Brittany said with a proud smile on her face.

"Okay, let me see your code breaking skills," Santana said.

"Okay," Brittany said, "A Costner/Houston situation means that you're my bodyguard, right?" Santana nodded. "He asked if you needed to come in and I think that's like a meeting or something. He said to go to the home of the midnight rider. The midnight rider either means an old classic rock song and I have no idea where that means to go, or it means Paul Revere which means we're going to Boston."

"That's pretty good," Santana smiled at her.

"I don't know what Eeyore means, I mean I know who Eeyore is but I don't know what he's code for, and I obviously don't know what you guys did in Tangiers."

"Eeyore has a tail pinned on him that he's constantly losing. Abe has had people following him ever since he left the Brotherhood. He's going to try to ditch them before meeting us. In Tangiers, we came close to being exposed just as we were about to set an assassination into motion so we wound up stalling the mission for 36 hours."

"So we're supposed to wait 36 hours before going to Boston?" Brittany asked.

** X**

"So I'm gonna go out and have a look around the perimeter," Santana said as soon as they were back to the safe house.

"But your food," Brittany countered.

"It'll keep. I'm not that hungry right now," she said which wasn't strictly speaking untrue. She hadn't been particularly deprived of food and would be able to go for at least a couple of hours before she was truly hungry but they had picked up some authentic Italian and it smelled heavenly which was seriously making her mouth water.

"Please don't make me eat alone," Brittany said in this sad little voice which just completely killed any and all of Santana's resolve to give Brittany some space.

Santana's safe house was a 350 square foot basement efficiency apartment with a full size mattress on the floor, a small table, and a mostly empty kitchenette. It really wasn't designed to be occupied by more than one person at a time. She had no TV, no radio, almost nothing in the way of entertainment. She did have a well used sparring dummy in one corner with three throwing daggers stuck in it.

Brittany took her food and sat on the bed pulling a pillow into her lap to use as a table. She patted the space next to her, wordlessly asking Santana to join her. Santana retrieved two bottles of water out of the refrigerator along with her food and settled in next to Brittany. Once there, Santana's mind couldn't help but go back to the last time the two of them were in bed together. She knew that wasn't happening again anytime soon so she tried as best she could to push those memories to the back of her mind. She was only moderately successful at it but then again she'd never really pushed the thoughts away.

They ate in relative silence save for the occasional sigh of contentment. The food was very good, after all. Santana finished first. She didn't generally eat a lot, never wanted to be too full, so there would be leftovers for the morning. Brittany continued eating to her heart's content. Santana went about stowing some of Brittany's things since there was no telling how long they'd be living out of this tiny place. The one small closet was mostly full of Santana's tradecraft equipment, but she managed to make room for Brittany's bag, no room to hang its contents up but she did what she could. She found Brittany's computer and hacked one of her neighbors' wifi signals so that they could have internet to provide some measure of entertainment.

Brittany was dumping her to-go box in the trash when something occurred to Santana. Neither of them had taken a shower since before their date last night, over twenty four hours ago. She said, "So the hot water heater in this place sucks and we'll be lucky if even one of us gets a shower before the water runs cold, so why don't you go first and I'll suffer through the cold after."

"Or we could take a shower together," Brittany said, pausing only a moment before clarifying, "Just a shower. Two people who have already seen each other naked getting clean at the same time and not having sex."

Santana suppressed a smile and said, "If you're comfortable doing that then I certainly don't object. It will be pretty close quarters in there though."

"Closer than last night?" Brittany asked with a cheeky smile.

"Well, obviously not," Santana said smiling as well.

"Then let's go," Brittany said walking past Santana pulling off her shirt as she went. Santana was left momentarily stuck dumb by the sight of Brittany's incredibly sexy back. She followed after quickly not wanting to miss a second of the precious few minutes she'll get to see of Brittany's beautiful, flawless skin. She entered the small bathroom to find Brittany standing still looking at something before turning her head to look back over her shoulder, "Your bathroom is smaller than my closet," she said.

"But still bigger than your bed," Santana said. Brittany smirked and then started shedding clothes. Santana followed her lead and soon they were both naked in close proximity. Santana couldn't stop herself from looking once more. Brittany cleared her throat and Santana's attention snapped up to see her with eyebrow hiked. "I'm sorry," Santana said, "It's just... never mind."

"No, say it," Brittany said sternly, "Tell me what you were going to say."

"Okay, I was going to say that you're the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my life," Santana sighed, "and if last night was the only time I get to be with you then I want you to know that it was the best night of my life and I'll never forget it." Brittany was still smiling so Santana was glad she hadn't scared her with her sudden confession. "I'm sorry if that's out of nowhere. I've wanted to tell you all day but I also wanted you to have emotional space to deal with everything I've dropped on you today."

"That's really sweet of you, San," Brittany said, "Thank you. Now come on." She quickly grabbed Santana by the hand and dragged her into the shower. It was small and cold until the water warmed up, and really, really not designed be occupied by more than one person at a time. Santana spent the next twenty minutes four inches or less away from Brittany's beautiful, naked, warm, wet body. Being this close to her and not being able to touch her and hold her, it was brutal. Santana had been tortured before... by people that knew what the fuck they were doing. _This_ was worse.

They were about ten minutes away from the end of any warmth when Brittany turned away from Santana and pulled her hair over one shoulder and looked back over her shoulder again. "Get my back?" she asked.

Santana smiled and picked up the bar of soap. "Always," she said.

"Just don't get any funny ideas," Brittany said.

It was way too late for that. Santana had had nothing but funny ideas since Brittany had suggested they take a shower together, but she could keep herself and her libido in check long enough to clean Brittany's back. Santana took her time working the soap into her back treasuring the opportunity to touch Brittany's amazing body once more.

When Santana finished Brittany's back she handed over the bar and turned around. She struggled to suppress her desire to moan when Brittany started running her hands up and down her back. "Santana," Brittany said. So lost in the sensation was she that she almost jumped when Brittany broke the silence. "Can I ask you a hypothetical question without you thinking it means more than it does?"

"I think so," Santana said, "Yeah."

"Okay," Brittany said. She took a deep breath before continuing, "If I were to decide… If I asked you to leave The Brotherhood to be with me, would you?"

"Yes," Santana said immediately.

"Just like that?" Brittany questioned, "That easily?"

Santana turned back to face her letting the water rinse her back off and then shut the shower off quickly. When Brittany gave her a curious look, Santana said, "Water was about to run cold." They exited the shower and Santana handed Brittany a towel before taking one for herself. They quickly dried off in silence and returned to the main room and began pulling out clothes for the night. "Yes, I hypothetically I would give up The Brotherhood for you," Santana said pulling on her pants, "and yes, that easily, for two reasons. One, I love you, Brittany. I've never felt anything like this before, not even close, and if that were the only reason, it would be enough, but then there's the second reason. The only reason I was able to do my job was the belief that what I was doing was making the world a better place. Now that I know the command structure has been compromised, I'll never be able to know for sure that the people I'm sent after are truly bad people or not so I'll never be able to do my job."

"Good," Brittany said. Santana turned to look at her and she looked positively adorable in blue pajama pants with yellow rubber duckies printed all over and a pink t-shirt. "I mean, not good that you can't trust people but good that you don't want to go back. I… I don't want you to kill people anymore."

Santana pulled her black long sleeved t-shirt over her head and smiled, "I can't promise you that, Brittany. Not yet, anyway." Brittany looked sad to hear that, so Santana explained, "There's a very good chance that before this is all said and done that someone will try to kill you or me or both of us, and I'm not going to let that happen. If I have to kill someone to keep them from killing you I will without hesitation." Santana tipped Brittany's dropped chin up to look her in the eyes. "If I can stop someone from hurting you without killing them, I'll do it, okay? For you, because I understand that you don't want this for me, but if it comes down to their life or yours then really there's no question for me."

Brittany nodded and then said, "Why are you dressed like this? I thought it was bed time."

"I really do need to do a sweep of the neighborhood," Santana said, "to make sure that no one is camping out watching us. I promise I won't be long, okay?"

"Okay," Brittany said.

"Okay," Santana said, "Don't open the door for anyone. I've got my keys."

Santana opened the door but was stopped from leaving by Brittany's hand on hers. "Santana, be safe out there, okay?" Santana turned back to look at her just in time for Brittany to wrap her up in a tight hug that felt like heaven to her. "And just so you know, last night was the best night of my life, too."


	6. Contacts and Conflicts Part One

**Disclaimer: I own neither Glee nor any part thereof. No money is being made off of this story and is intended only for entertainment purposes; therefore it falls within the parameters of "Fair Use"**

**A/N: Thanks one again to everyone who gives feedback, you guys are totally awesome. This one took me a while because I was having trouble getting Artie's voice right. I'm still not totally sure I did any good with him but I'm tired of rewriting it. I'm going to start out this chapter with a bit of a tease of action that we won't actually get to. Basically this chapter and the next were supposed to be one chapter but it started getting long so I'm splitting it. Hope you enjoy.**

**Chapter 6**

**Contacts and Conflicts Part 1**

**10:22 pm EST, May 23rd**

Santana coughed herself awake. Her vision was blurry, her ears were ringing, and she tasted asphalt on her tongue, everything around her smelled like smoke. There was a pain in her left leg she couldn't identify and there was blood on her clothes that she also couldn't identify. There was a burning wreck of a car nearby and two other people on the ground, one of them on fire and not moving, thus probably dead. None of those things concerned her remotely as much as the fact that she didn't know where Brittany was.

**X**

**11:25 am EST, May 23****rd**

Bright and early that morning Santana had gotten another encrypted text from Abe with a confirmation number of two train tickets from New York to Boston and a GPS location for them to meet. At a cursory glance, the location would put them in the Mid Dorchester neighborhood. Santana hadn't bothered nailing down an exact address on the train but as the two of them, following Santana's handheld GPS tracker, strolled onto the campus of The University of Massachusetts, Boston Santana began to wish that she had. The location would only get them within a hundred feet of where they were supposed to meet Abe which wouldn't even necessarily narrow it down to a single building much less a floor and an office or classroom.

As they approached the Computer Science building, Santana's phone rang, and she suddenly stopped walking as did Brittany a moment later. Santana retrieved her phone looking at the screen which told her that the number was blocked, but again, only Brittany and Abe had this number and Brittany was standing right in front of her. "Yeah?" she answered.

"Your Whitney's cute," Abe said.

"We're here," Santana said, "Where the hell are you?"

"Around," he said, "Go into the building at your 12, follow the main corridor ahead to the second cross hallway and make a left. Go in the first door on your right. It's a soundproof group study room. Hurry."

The line went dead so she quickly dumped the phone back into her pocket. "Come on," she said to Brittany, "I feel like we're going to have some serious hoops to jump through since he doesn't know you." Brittany followed her without question. "When we get in there he's probably going to try to grill you about… I don't know, probably everything. Remember the other day when we were talking to that Puck guy that I didn't trust and I asked you not to tell him anything? Well this is the exact opposite of that, I trust Abe with my life. Whatever he asks you, tell him, your real name, things about us, whatever. He was paranoid before Smythe crippled him, now he's fifty times worse. If he gets even a hint that you're not entirely on the level then he will assume that you're out to get me or more likely him and we'll never even get in a room with him let alone get him to help us."

All Brittany said was, "Okay."

They walked through the large glass front doors of the Computer Science building following Abe's direction once they were in. They quickly found and entered the study room in question. Santana held the door for Brittany and then followed her in. When the door closed behind her, Santana heard a distinctive click. "Abe, did you just lock me in this fucking room?" No response. "I know you can hear me."

Santana quickly took in the room. It was about fifteen feet by twenty feet. There were two windows in the room looking out onto the two hallways that bordered it; the blinds were currently down on both. One large table took up the center of the room with eight chairs arranged around it. In the middle of the table was a conference phone with a blinking red light.

Santana rolled her eyes at herself, crossed the room to the table, and pushed the button. "Yes, I can hear you," Abe said, "No, I didn't lock you in the room. I locked everyone else out of it. Now both of you sit, I need to get to know Whitney."

"Brittany," Brittany said sitting down in front of the phone.

"I know." "He knows." Abe and Santana said speaking over one another. Santana sat down next to Brittany.

"How?"

"He's Abe," Santana said.

"I know who you are, Brittany," Abe said, "because I know what's going on between you two. Mac here said more than she thinks she did when she called it a 'Costner/Houston situation'. She was trying to invoke the word 'bodyguard' but what's The Bodyguard about?"

Brittany looked at Santana and smiled before saying , "It's about a bodyguard who falls in love with his client."

"Exactly," Abe said, "I knew The Brotherhood wouldn't ever assign an operative of Mac's skill to babysit someone, so I looked into what she was doing. I found out that she had been sent out to kill you and that a month later she was still on the case. It's never taken her anywhere near that long to resolve a case, so that could only mean that something had gone sideways. I did a little digging into who you are and then I found some traffic camera footage of you two together in a very nice looking Audi. So Mac, tell the truth 'cause you know I'll know if you don't… are you really in love with Brittany?"

"Yes," Santana said.

"And this is… I don't know… serious?" Abe said.

Santana looked up to where she was pretty sure that she spotted one of Abe's micro cameras. "Serious enough that you don't have to call me Mac," she said.

There was silence over the intercom for a minute, "You…" he started and fell silent again, "Brittany, what is Mac's real name?"

"Santana Christina Maria Lopez," Brittany said.

"Do you know my real name?"

Brittany looked at Santana puzzled, "Not unless your real name is Abe," she said, "Which I never really thought it was. I know you guys all have codenames and aliases and stuff."

"What do you know about me?" he asked.

"Abe, come on," Santana said, "What's the point of this?"

"San, you told me to answer his questions," Brittany said putting a hand over Santana's, "You said we need his help and that we have to go through this so that he'll trust me. Abe, I'll answer anything you want to ask me. I know you use to work with Santana until you got hurt. Someone stabbed you in the back and now you can't walk. I know you're good with computers. I know that you and Santana are best friends and have been for like ever and I know you're the only person in the world that Santana trusts with her life. I'm sorry if any of that is stuff you didn't want me to know. I really am, but we need your help… _I_ need your help. People want to hurt me for something I didn't do. I don't want to die and I don't want Santana to die because she helped me. She says you're our best hope of getting The Brotherhood to leave me alone, so if you need to ask me a hundred questions to make sure I really am who I say I am, then ask them. I'll answer all of them as best I can and I just… we really need your help, Abe."

"Okay, then," Abe said seemingly unaffected by her speech, "Just answer everything honestly and we'll have no problems. And just so you know, Brittany, I can spot a lie a mile away." Brittany just nodded. "Let's start easy. Can you tell me your full name please?"

"Brittany Susan Pierce."

"And were you named after anyone, Brittany?"

"Um, my middle name, Susan, was the name of my cheerleading coach in high school. She went to high school with my parents and they're still like best friends and stuff," Brittany said, "I think they just picked my first name out of a book or something."

"When and where were you born?" Abe asked next.

"Lima General Hospital in Lima, Ohio on July 17th, 1993 at six in the morning. My mom never let me forget that."

"That segues nicely," Abe said, "Tell me about your family."

"My dad's name is Jeffery Robert Pierce. My mom is Mary Ann Katherine Farmer or that was her maiden name, it's Pierce now. They met in college at Ohio State University. They've been married for thirty something years, I forget how many exactly."

**X**

Over the course of the next hour and a half, Abe questioned Brittany about her life growing up, moving to New York, school, her contact with Abstergo, and her version of meeting Santana. Brittany answered every question openly, honestly, and without hesitation. Santana learned a lot about her in that hour, things that weren't in the dossier The Brotherhood gave her since it was relevant to Santana's mission. So caught up in processing all this information was Santana that she almost missed Abe's last question to Brittany… almost.

"Are you in love with Santana?" he asked.

"What the fuck, Abe?" Santana reacted immediately, "She doesn't have to tell you that. Brittany, you don't have to answer that. That's not a damn bit of his business. You don't have to know every damn thing about everyone, you nosey fuck. She has been beyond cooperative while you grilled her now back the fuck off already."

The silence that followed was pointed. Abe was an intelligence officer in The Brotherhood and Santana knew that once he'd asked a question, he would wait for an answer, for days if needed and he also knew that they were sort of desperate for his help. Santana also knew that he wasn't intentionally being a dick, it's just how he was. If she were face to face with him she might get him to back down on intruding into Brittany's personal feelings that frankly he didn't need to know, but she wasn't in the same room with him. For all she knew, she wasn't even in the same building or the same part of town with him and even if she knew where to find him, she wasn't certain that she'd be able to enter the room without his permission. Security systems and intrusion countermeasures were Abe's stock in trade these days.

Santana was stirred from her thoughts when she heard Brittany speak once more. "Yes," she said with her eyes affixed firmly to the speakerphone, "The answer to your last question is yes." Santana had no idea what to say and Brittany never looked her way.

After a moment Abe spoke again, "Diving ship, pastime, halitosis, deuce, Twinkies, lonely, Zoso. Confirmed?"

"Confirmed," Santana said immediately. She stood and walked for the door. Brittany followed her. When they were back in the hallway she said, "Need to find an elevator."

"Back that way," Brittany said, pointing back the way they'd come, "I think we passed one on our way here." Sure enough, back in the first cross hallway on the right there was an elevator. "So that was more code," Brittany said as Santana pushed the down button.

"Yeah," Santana replied, "A diving ship is a submarine, the America's national pastime is baseball, halitosis means you have bad breath which means you need a mint, so that all adds up to 'sub' 'base' 'mint'. Deuce means two. Twinkies also means two because they come two to a pack. Lonely means one because one is the loneliest number, and Zoso is the title of an album that most of the world calls Led Zeppelin IV. So we're either going to the sub-basement to room 2214 or to sub-basement 2 to room 214." The elevator doors parted soon and they both stepped on. There was a sub-basement and a sub-basement 2, so Santana pushed both buttons. As the doors slid back shut Santana looked at Brittany and said, "Look, I'm sorry he made you do that. He can be a real jackass sometimes. There was no need for him to force you into answering that last question before you were ready. I'm so sorry, and I gonna punch him in the fucking face when we get down there. You hear that, Abe?" she said louder, holding her left fist aloft, "This fist, your face, asshole."

"It's okay," she said softly as the elevator doors slid open again.

"Wait here one second," Santana said, "hold the door open." Without waiting for any sort of response she made a left outside the elevator quickly making her way down the narrow corridor. She turned back after less than twenty yards. "Three digit room numbers, all starting with 1," she said to Brittany when she returned.

They both stepped back into the elevator and let it continue its descent. "I meant it," Brittany said softly. Santana didn't know how to respond to this confession. "Finding out who you are, what you do… it didn't change how I felt… feel. I'm not ready to act on what I feel but…"

After a moment it became clear that Brittany wasn't going to finish verbalizing the thought, Santana gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "Take all the time you need, Brittany. I'm not going anywhere, not without you, not unless _you _tell me to leave."

Brittany nodded. Neither of them spoke again and soon the elevator door slid open again. Santana led the way down the hall. They followed the directory signs and eventually came to room 214. Santana tried the door but it was locked. She quickly glanced up and down the hall as she retrieved her lock pick tools from her jacket pocket, glad that she'd brought the tools of her trade with her today. The lock was deceptively complex but then Santana had been expecting that. Whereas, a normal lock usually took less than ten seconds, it wound up taking her the better part of two minutes to pick this one. When the door swung open, Santana and Brittany were left staring at a cleaning supply closet. "Wrong room?" Brittany guessed.

"Not a chance," Santana said wading into the room, feeling long the walls as she went. Brittany stood at the door and watched her as Santana felt high and low clearly looking for something. A couple of minutes of searching later, Santana was knelt near the back wall when Brittany heard a click and a section of the wall slid away.

Brittany waded into the room to look beyond the hidden to see a flight of stairs leading even further down. "If your friend is in a wheelchair then how does he get down there?"

"Abe's not going to hole himself up in a place with only one way in or out," Santana said. She pulled out a flashlight and flicked it on to illuminate the stairwell. "Close the outside door." Brittany did as told and Santana led her down an interminably long set of stairs. Finally after so many stairs that Brittany had lost count they came to a landing where there was a ninety degree right turn and another ten stairs ending in a heavy metal door. Santana walked quickly down the stairs and tried the latch on the door but it too, of course, was locked. She banged heavily on the door and yelled, "Open the door, Abe!"

A small speaker embedded in the wall next to the door broadcast Abe's voice, "What's the password?"

Santana's head whipped over to stare at the speaker before shouting, "The password is OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, ABE! I've put up with your paranoid shit as long as I intend to! I need your help but that doesn't give you license to abuse our friendship goddamnit!" Santana's outburst was immediately followed by the sounds of things in the door sliding, presumably the sounds of either locks being undone or more locks being done. Santana tried the door once more and found that this time it pulled open effortlessly.

The room beyond was huge. There were ten work tables in two rows facing a bank of about fifty monitors on the far wall all bearing different images. Abe was sat at table closest to the wall of monitors staring down at the computer screen on the desk. "Jesus, Abe, how did you manage all of this, you printing money these days?"

"Ha!" he barked, "Who needs to print money when I can just hack bank's network and create myself an account with as much money as I need? As for the monitor bank this used to be an NSA listening post. It was abandoned four years ago because of budget cuts. They stripped it of most everything but apparently that was too much effort or too many man hours to disassemble."

"What are you watching?" Brittany asked.

"Airports, sea ports, train stations, bus terminals, this school, obviously… honestly, the list of places I'm not watching would be shorter to describe," he said pointing over his shoulder, "All that video gets fed into a supercomputer that takes up the next room where it runs the most sophisticated facial recognition software known to man. I track the whereabouts of all known members of the Knights Templar at all times."

"To find the one that hurt you?" Brittany asked.

Abe looked at Brittany in surprise then quickly re-directed his attention towards Santana in anger. "Don't look at me like that," Santana said, "You interrogated her for an hour and a half, then pressured her into revealing something she wasn't ready to tell. After that, I'd have told her your real name, where you were born, your favorite brand of breakfast cereal, and whether or not you wear boxers or briefs. Don't pretend you're some saint here."

"Fine," Abe said tersely, "Call it a wash. You need help."

"I do," Santana said, "You already know most of this but a month ago I got a kill order on Brittany here from Il Maestro, but as it turns out she's not an agent or an asset of The Templars, she's not even an employee of Abstergo. She's a former human test subject for a project called Morningstar. I was hoping you either knew or could find out what that was."

"The only thing I know off the top of my head about it is that it's connected to The Animus Project," Abe said.

Santana sat there for a moment expecting him to explain, "I'm not in Intelligence, Abe. Those words are completely meaningless to me."

"Right," he said shaking his head a little, "Sorry," he added before turning back to his computer and clicking away on a few things. Suddenly the wall of monitors cleared of all the disparate images to show one solid image. It was a drawing of platform about three feet high, rectangular in shape with a row of what looked like lights running down the middle length wise and round plastic dome on one end.

"That's it," Brittany said. Both of them looked at her. "That's the thing I would lay on when I went in for the treatments."

"That's the Animus," Abe said, "It was the brainchild of Abstergo research scientist Dalton Rumba who had a theory that… well strictly speaking it wasn't even a theory so much as a hypothesis because theories…"

"Abe," Santana said.

"Right, sorry," he said, "Rumba had a hypothesis that each of us stores the memories of our ancestors in our DNA and built the Animus in order to access those memories and before you ask, I have no idea how. I do computers, not people. All I can tell you is that it worked, so apparently it's true. After the thing was built, several people from Assassin families disappeared never to be heard from again."

"They were taken alive?" Santana asked.

"They weren't trained operatives, Santana," Abe said quickly clicking on a few more buttons and twelve monitors along the bottom of the wall flashed up dossiers. "All of them were at least two generations removed from active duty. Most of them had never even set foot on a farm, but because of Animus technology it didn't matter. Strapping them to these machines and forcing them to relive their grandparents and great-grandparents' lives was every bit as effective as interrogating the operatives themselves, even better really because these people were likely never trained to withstand interrogation like we are."

"What was the endgame?" Santana asked.

"Rumba's was apparently just to create the machine," Abe explained, "As near as I can tell, he's an entirely legit, completely above board scientist… or rather he was. He got run over by a car a year and a half ago."

"They killed him?" Santana asked.

"Hard to say," he answered, "He was stone deaf in one ear after a bout of scarlet fever as a child, so it's possible it really was an accident, but yeah, it's more likely that they took him out to keep him from publishing his findings so that they could keep Animus a secret. As for Abstergo's endgame, I couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is whatever they were looking for odds are they found it because they've stopped looking… at least as far as anyone can tell. When The Brotherhood got wind of missing Assassins kids, everyone ever associated with The Brotherhood got set up with a protective detail. That's when I got my babysitters. No one has disappeared since."

Santana looked to Brittany and said, "And you don't remember anything like this?"

Brittany shook her head and said, "Maybe it didn't work on me."

"No," Santana said with certainty, "I can assure you that they didn't have you come in every day for months and pay you more than a million dollars if they weren't getting _something_ out of you. No, it's more likely that they did something to tamper with you memories of what happened."

"They can do that?" Brittany said.

Santana looked to Abe who shrugged then back to Brittany, "I have no idea but apparently they can summon the memories of people who died decades maybe even centuries ago out of their great grandchildren. Suppressing memories has been done in one form or another for a hundred years or more through something as simple as hypnosis. I don't know why they wouldn't be able to." Brittany had no response to that. She sucked her bottom lip in between her teeth and nodded sadly.

When no one spoke again for a couple of minutes, Abe finally piped up, "So I can dig into the Morningstar thing but it might take some time, I can get through Abstergo's security system but it won't be easy and it definitely won't be quick." He pointed to a doorway on his right and said, "There's some makeshift living quarters through there, if you want to take a nap or get something to eat, or there's an armory and a dojo through there," he pointed the other way to his left, "if you want to exercise or whatever, mi casa is su casa, just please don't stand here and watch me work. It's unnerving."

Santana looked to Brittany and said, "Food?"

"Food," Brittany replied.


	7. Contacts and Conflicts Part Two

**A/N: I know what you're thinking, "Holy Shit! Four months later he finally remembers this story." or possibly you're thinking nothing because you gave up on me. I certainly understand that, but on the off chance that you're still here, still reading then rest assured that I'm almost halfway through the next chapter so there shouldn't be any more months long waits between chapters.**

**About a week ago I sat down and wrote out a full summary of the remainder of the plot of this story and where I was once thinking this story to be six to seven chapters it's now looking to be 12-15. I'm hoping to have it down in time for the release of Assassin's Creed III on Oct 30****th****, mostly because once it comes out I'm going to be very, very busy **_**not**_** writing.**

**Thanks for reading and I hope anyone who is still with me is still enjoying.**

**Chapter 7**

**Contacts and Conflicts Part 2**

**2:40 pm EST, May 23****rd**

Santana was sitting alone in her room, or rather the room in Abe's hideout that she was using for the time being. They had walked past half a dozen similar rooms that had likely once been offices back when this had been a NSA base had been converted into small sleeping quarters with twin sized beds and a small footlocker in each. Santana's had a cabinet in it as well which Santana hadn't bothered looking into yet.

It had been twenty minutes since she had left Brittany in the room across the hall and she couldn't really let herself relax. She was bound and determined to give the girl some space now that she actually had the chance. She knew Abe's place was a fortress, at least a hundred feet underground with all of Abe's crazy security measures, they were as safe as they would ever be, she knew that. Yet, still she couldn't relax.

Brittany suddenly walked into the room without knocking and settled onto the bed next to Santana leaving less than two inches of space between them. "Didn't anyone ever teach you to knock?" Santana asked with a smile bumping her shoulder against Brittany's.

"Of course they did," Brittany said, "but I just figured, what part of you was I going to see that I haven't already had my mouth on?"

"My feet?" Santana said, "I don't recall you going mouth to foot."

"Yeah, that's just gross to me," Brittany said, "I'm sorry if you're into that or whatever..."

"I'm not," Santana replied.

"Good," Brittany said, "Because feet can be cute but not sexy, not to me at least."

They fell silent for a moment before Santana spoke again. "I was trying to give you some space," she said, "y'know, so you can process everything."

Brittany scoffed, "I can't begin to process this, Santana, Legions of Evil and noble killers and secret societies, least of that I'm somehow some important piece of someone's plans. I appreciate you thinking of me but I don't want space. I know you said we're safe here but I don't feel safe without you. So if you don't mind..."

"No, of course," Santana said, "Although if we do end up sleeping here tonight, then I say we drag another bed in here next to this one. As much as I love being close to you, two grown ass adults in one twin sized bed just isn't comfortable."

"Agreed," Brittany said, "But I'm not tired now."

"No, me either," Santana said.

"Didn't we come in here looking for food? There's got to be food down here somewhere, right?" Brittany asked, "I mean, I doubt Abe has pizza delivered to his secret base."

Santana smiled. It was the first time in three days that Brittany had expressed any interest in food without being prompted. "Yeah, I'm sure he's got something to eat."

Opting to leave Abe to his work, they went in search of food by themselves. They found a lot more furnished living quarters. Abe seemingly was set up to house as many as a hundred people if needs be. Santana had no clue as to why he was ever this prepared or even how he managed to set up so many beds in his pseudo-Batcave. The long hallway that served as the barracks eventually made a right turn. Down that hall they found the laundry, the showers, and eventually a fully stocked, wheelchair accessible kitchen.

"What on Earth?" Santana said to herself.

"I know, right?" Brittany said, "For a guy that lives alone, Abe sure has a lot of stuff." Brittany started looking through the cabinets finding pots and pans and trays and dishes, everything one would need to feed a family or even several families. Eventually she found the dry storage and found it packed full of every type of non-perishable food item imaginable. The refrigerator was likewise stocked.

"So what do you want to eat?" Santana asked, "It looks like we have our choice of pretty much anything."

"Oh no," Brittany said, "I'm cooking."

"I can cook," Santana insisted.

"So can I," Brittany replied, "and you already do everything else."

"I don't mind."

Brittany sighed, "Santana, look at it like this, you keep us alive in the 'people want to kill us' sense, let me keep us alive in the 'people have to eat to _stay_ alive' sense. Please? I feel like I contribute nothing."

Santana smiled and said, "If you're sure."

"I am," Brittany said, "Now what do you want to eat?"

"You pick," Santana said, "I'm good for whatever, but speaking of needing to eat to stay alive, when Abe gets into his hacking mode, he sometimes forgets that. So whatever you choose make enough for our host as well would you?"

"Totally." Brittany started rooting around through the cabinet looking at what all there was to work with. Santana took a seat at one of the counters and watched her go. "Oooh, penne," Brittany said to herself. She turned to look back at Santana and said, "Is pasta okay?"

"As long as it doesn't have a really heavy sauce," Santana replied. Brittany just nodded quickly pulling out a box of uncooked penne pasta followed quickly by a bottle of olive oil. From another cabinet she retrieved garlic and basil and then three types of cheese, a box of grape tomatoes, and a package of chicken tenderloins found their way from the fridge to the counter.

Before long Brittany had the penne boiling in a pot and she was humming, singing to herself, and dancing (like an elaborate, choreographed dance that she would do at the dance studio) as she seasoned and cooked the chicken. Santana smiled and watched her work. "Got me hoping you'll page me right now, your kiss. Got me hoping you'll save me right now. Looking so crazy in love's got me looking. Got me looking so crazy in love." Brittany glanced up at Santana and smiled with just a hint of embarrassment. "Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh no no," she sang as she spun around in a circle.

"Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh no no," Santana sang back rocking her hips back and forth in her seat. Considering her life's work, music had never been a huge priority but she damn well knew Beyonce.

"Sorry," Brittany said with a huge grin on her face, "Music was always a huge part of cooking at my house, and well, I'm a dancer so singing and dancing go together in my head, so I kind of just sing and dance whenever I cook."

"You never have to apologize for being yourself, Brit, especially not when you're being that adorable," Santana said.

**X**

**3:30 pm EST, May 23rd**

"It's got to do with something called The Bleed Effect," Abe said over his shoulder as her scrolled through things and clicked on other things.

"I'm sorry?" Brittany asked.

"Oh, sorry," he said turning his chair to look at her, "Thought you were Santana. This is usually about the time she'd start bothering me for answers. What brings you up here?"

"I made food," she said holding the plate forward, "Santana said you sometimes forget to eat when you're working hard, so I brought you some so you can keep yourself energized and keep your big brain running smoothly."

"Thanks," he said gratefully as Brittany settled the plate down next to his computer.

"Oh, it's no problem," Brittany said, "I mean it's your food after all."

"But you cooked it and it looks delicious," he said, "so thanks."

"You're welcome," Brittany said. She was silent for a moment before saying, "So 'The Bleed Effect'?"

"That's all I know," he said, "Just the name. I assume it's just a euphemism. You said they didn't take any blood from you?"

"Nope," Brittany confirmed.

"It says here, 'Morningstar will be an effort to maximize the potential of the effect described as The Bleed in the case studies of Project: Animus. If fully realized, this could clear a path for future plans at greatly lessened expenditure of human resources.' I'm still trying to dig up records on Project: Animus and I'm still data mining for Morningstar or your name," he said turning back to his computer, "Don't worry, I'll figure this out."

"Okay," Brittany said with a smile, "but you gotta eat."

"Right," he said, "Eat." He scooped himself a mouthful, hummed in delight, and returned to his computer.

He typed away for a few minutes, eating as he did, before Santana stormed into the room. "Alright, Abe, tell me what the fuck you know," she said. He turned in his chair to look at her chewing his food in an exaggerated and deliberate manner. She just rolled her eyes at him.

"There's something called The Bleed Effect," Brittany said, "We don't know what it is or what it does, but he's still looking into it. Now leave him alone and let him work. Come on, you probably want to exercise, right? You didn't get in this good a shape sitting around all day like we did yesterday." Santana just stared at her like she was ruining her day, but Brittany knew that couldn't be true because she was offering to get all sweaty in Santana's vicinity and she knew Santana would like that. "Come on," she said walking over to her and taking Santana by the hand. Santana's face softened immediately. She wasn't smiling just yet but she wasn't far off from one.

"You're lucky I like you," Santana said to Brittany before turning back to Abe and saying, "And you, you figure out what the hell is going on and I might admit to liking you, too."

"I'm not holding my breath," Abe said as Brittany dragged them out of the room.

**X**

"Teach me to fight," Brittany said. It wasn't a question. Due to a lack any other sort of workout equipment they'd been running through a calisthenics routine for about twenty minutes. They were both feeling good and loose and Santana had just been about to suggest they run laps around the dojo.

"No," Santana said firmly, "I'll do all the fighting you need."

"Santana," she said in a pleading tone.

"Didn't we have the division of labor discussion back in the kitchen?" Santana countered, "I keep people from killing us, you keep us fed? I'm pretty sure that was what we determined."

"What if you're busy trying to stop someone from killing us and someone else shows up trying to kill us?"

Santana sighed and dropped her head. "First of all," she said looking back up, "I'm completely capable of fighting more than one person at a time. I've fought and beat three people at once many times and I've fought five to a standstill before. Secondly, in your hypothetical situation, I don't want you to fight. I want you to run as fast as you can."

"And I will if I can," Brittany said, "but that may not always be an option. Look, I love you but I don't want to be like you. I don't want to become an assassin, I don't want to join The Brotherhood, and I don't want to kill people, but like it or not, I live in a dangerous world now and I need to be able to defend myself if I have to." Santana's face was stern and she really didn't want give into this request but she knew that Brittany's logic was sound. "Please, Santana?" she asked again in this little soft voice that finally destroyed what was left of Santana's resolve.

"Fine," she said after a moment of tense silence. Her tone was short and clipped. "I'll teach you some basics so you can defend yourself if necessary, but you only do it as an absolute last resort. The people you're going up against will have been fighting all their lives. What I'm going to teach you in a few hours or however long we're here will never stand up to that. Your first instinct still needs to be to run."

Brittany nodded and said, "Okay."

Santana shook her head vigorously, "No, Brittany you have to promise me. Promise me that you won't try to fight these people. I can't deal with the thought of you dying." There was desperation in her voice as pled. "Promise me."

Brittany a terse smile on face raised her right arm with her pinky finger extended. Santana smiled and hooked her pinky around Brittany's as they both drew in tight to one another. "I swear," Brittany said.

Abe's dojo had a small boxing ring in it. To what purpose this served a paraplegic, neither of them knew. As far as Santana was aware Abe hadn't had this base before he was crippled so it was anyone's guess but she wasn't second guessing it right now. She went to a nearby cabinet and grabbed them some sparring pads. She deposited them all on the ring apron before leading Brittany to the heavy bag and running her through the basics of how to throw various punches and kicks.

Brittany picked up the basics very quickly which didn't come as much of a surprise to Santana. She was a very talented dancer so a certain level of body control was to be expected. Once Santana was satisfied that she had a grasp of the basics, she wrapped hers and Brittany's fists, held hers up in front of her, and said, "Okay, punch me."

"What?" Brittany said.

"Don't worry," Santana assured her, "I'll block everything. I just need to see if you're stronger in your arms or your legs. I mean I think I know the answer already, but just go with it. Hard as you can." Brittany ran through the things that Santana had taught her and true to her word Santana blocked everything quickly and easily. Santana quickly learned what she'd already suspected that Brittany had very strong legs. "Good," Santana said, "you're definitely a stronger kicker so that's what we'll focus on. I'm going to start by teaching you kickboxing and maybe some Tai Kwon Do too."

Brittany just nodded and they went to work practicing. Santana taught Brittany all about stances and techniques and again Brittany picked them up very, very quickly. Most of the time Santana didn't even have to show her more that once how to do anything before she had it down perfectly. Her form was excellent, her movement was flawless, her balance was amazing, but what impressed Santana the most was Brittany's rate of learning. Things that should have taken at least a couple of hours to become fluid at took Brittany only minutes.

"You've taken kickboxing lessons before," Santana said. She wasn't even asking a question. She was confident that it was the truth.

"No," Brittany countered, "I really haven't."

"You had to have," Santana said.

Brittany shook her head and said, "I've never thrown a punch before today."

"Well, my love, you're a natural then," Santana said, "Let's move onto some more complex stuff and see _how_ you natural you are."

Santana moved on to start showing Brittany blocks and combos and again Brittany picked them all up lightning fast, still only needing to be shown things once or maybe twice before she had them down.

So effortless was Brittany's learning that Santana often found herself distracted just watching Brittany, watching already toned muscles flex and strain, watching beads of sweat form and then run over flawless skin. Twice Santana had to stop herself from leering, which Brittany undoubtedly noticed, although she didn't let on or say anything.

**X**

**7:05 pm EST, May 23rd**

Three hours in Santana was on the verge of dropping from exhaustion (which was a feat in itself) when Abe wheeled himself into the room with a tray of food across his lap. He watched them still hard at it, by now full tilt sparring for several minutes before either girl noticed him.

Eventually Brittany caught his eye over Santana's shoulder and pointed him out to Santana. She turned to look at him with an expectant look on her face. "I brought sandwiches," he said.

"I'm less interested in sandwiches and more interested in this Bleed Effect and Morningstar," Santana said gruffly. She climbed out of the ring as she stripped off her sparring pads. Brittany followed suit. "I'm thinking it has something to do with kinetic mimicry, because the way Brittany's picked this stuff up is downright scary."

"Kinetic mimicry?" Brittany said grabbing bottles of water for herself and Santana, "What's that?"

"It's a myth," Abe said handing each of them a sandwich and setting the tray he carried them in on aside.

"Abe, come on, after all we've seen and done you're going to completely dismiss even the possibility that..." Santana tailed off and planted her hands on her hips. "Dude, we know a _psychic_, one that we know for a fact is legit. How is that any less likely than that?"

"Because she's not the only psychic in the world," Abe said, "There are hundreds of perfectly functioning psions in the world and thousands throughout history..."

"You are an unbelievable skeptic," Santana said.

"And you're so quick to believe..."

"Guys!" Brittany called them down, "Someone please let me in on what's going on."

"Kinetic mimicry," Santana said turning back to face Brittany, "is the ability to perfectly duplicate any complex movement that you have observed. I think you have it because you've learned months' worth of martial arts in only a few hours."

"You think I have superpowers?" Brittany said.

"It's not really a superpower," Santana said, "There are people who can recall with 100% accuracy anything they've ever seen, read, or heard. It's called eidetic memory or photographic memory. So it stands to reason that the same principal couldn't be applied to muscle and joint movement. No matter what certain doubters in the room may think."

"Those doubters would tell you that there's no basis in science to support such a hypothesis," Abe said.

"Science can't explain how Rachel can read our fucking minds either, Abe, but she damn well does it!"

"Look," Abe said, "You had me research all of this Morningstar stuff, so do you want to know what I found or do you just want to speculate?"

"Yeah," Santana said, the sharp edge suddenly gone from her voice, "Um, what did you find?"

"Okay so the Animus Project was designed to force subjects to recall the memories of the genetic ancestors, but during the trials they discovered something that they called The Bleed Effect. It turns out that a subject's prolonged exposure to their ancestor's memories also caused the subjects to begin displaying some of the skills of those same ancestors, and again, I'm a computer guy not a brain guy so I have no idea how this works, only that apparently it does."

"People recalling muscle memory as well as actual memories," Santana said.

"Possibly," Abe agreed, "But ultimately that's what Project: Morningstar is or was. I can't tell if it's still running or not. It's an attempt to find people who have the blood of soldiers in their veins, find them and push them to recall their ancestor's fighting skills in order to…"

"Build an army," Santana said.

"Theoretically the greatest army ever assembled," Abe said, "I mean, imagine an army consisting of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, George Patton, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte… and not just one of each but dozens, maybe hundreds of copies of each, people that could become as good as those military greats in a matter of a few months instead of decades."

"So who's Brittany related to?" Santana asked.

"Probably not anyone you've ever heard of," Abe said.

"You might be surprised," Santana said.

"Brittany," he said, "Since we're being rude talking about you like you weren't here, do you recognize this man?" Abe pulled an old black and white photo of a man in about his mid 30's from a folder in his lap.

After looking at it for a minute or so she replied, "Yeah, that's like my great granddad, right? Peter something? I never met him though. He died before I was born."

"Master Sergeant Peter Adamson, United States Army," Abe started reading the file, "Born Piotr Odomsky in a village a few miles outside of St. Petersburg in Russia, 1912. Moved to Belgrade, Serbia with his five siblings in 1917 to live with their aunt and uncle when the Bolsheviks came, from there the children fled to the US in 1928 amid rising tensions between the Serbs and Croatians. The family changed their names at Ellis Island and Piotr, now Peter, fudged his age so that he could join the army to help feed his family.

"He was cited as an exceptional soldier on many occasions and was particularly adept at several forms of hand-to-hand combat. Eventually he earned a place teaching what he knew at Fort Benning, Georgia. That, of course, was all before he went into the European Theater during World War II, where he was cited a dozen times for distinguished service, exceptional valor, and receiving more medals than I'd really care to list, including seven Purple Hearts."

"I had no idea," Brittany said smiling, "I didn't know any of that, but then both of my parents are pacifists, so I guess it figures. So are you saying that, I can do all these things because my great granddad could?"

"Well, I mean, it's unlikely that he knew Muy Thai Kickboxing or Tai Kwon Do," Abe said, "but you have definitely forcibly inherited his aptitude for martial arts."

Brittany shook her head slowly, "This all makes no sense to me," she said, the smile slipping from her face, "Wait, you said they were building an army. Does that make me like The Manchurian Candidate or whatever? Am I gonna suddenly start killing people cuz I really don't wanna do that."

Santana suddenly felt like her heart was skipping several beats. Even as Abe had explained everything, the thought of Brittany being a sleeper agent hadn't even occurred to her. Now, however, she was hard pressed to ignore it. For the first time in days she was forced to consider that she was wrong, that Brittany was a legitimate target and that Santana had thrown her life away for nothing. _No,_ she thought, _not nothing, for love and even if Brittany was programmed they'd find a way to get her un-programmed._

"I don't know," Abe said not helping Santana's sudden stress levels, "There's nothing in your file to suggest that, but I can't swear that you weren't."

Almost as soon as he'd finished speaking, Santana blurted out, "What can we do to be sure?" Instinctively she moved to within reach of Brittany who had started to draw in on herself. She reached out and pulled Brittany into her and Brittany's hands circled her waist, her chin resting on Santana's shoulder.

"You, um," Artie started and stopped, not sure if either of them were paying any attention, he waited a minute before beginning again, "you may need to go visit another old childhood friend."

"Rachel," Santana said softly.

"If anyone can find out if Brittany has a trigger, it would be her," Abe said.

"Rachel?" Brittany said, her eyebrows knit as she looked down into Santana's eyes, "Big Mouth Berry is _Rachel_ Berry, the singer?" Santana nodded. "I know her."

"Really?"

"I mean, we're not like best friends or anything," Brittany said, "I've danced back-up for her a couple of times when she's done shows in New York. _She's_ with The Brotherhood?"

"She's an associate," Santana explained, "She's… she has a sixth sense. When we were little, she used to say that she was a little bit psychic. Now she's a lot psychic."

"You mean she can see the future?" Brittany asked, "Is that how she'll know if I'm like programmed or whatever?"

"No," Santana said, "She can read your mind, or she will be able to eventually. It might require us to spend some time with her, depending on how much time you've already spent with her and how long ago it was."

Brittany's eyes fluttered closed and she laid her head on Santana's shoulder. "I think I need to go lay down," she said, "This is…"

"A lot to process?" Santana filled in for her. Brittany nodded. "It's been a long day, a long couple of days really. A nap would probably do you some good. Me and Abe can work out the details of us finding Rachel."

"No," Brittany said, "Come lay down with me."

"I can handle finding Rachel," Abe said, "She doesn't exactly keep a low profile."

Abe returned to his computer while the girls returned to the sleeping quarters. They dragged the bed out of the room that Brittany had been in earlier into Santana's room. Once the beds were set up together, Brittany unabashedly started changing out of her sweaty clothes into a change that she had with her in her bag. Santana resisted the urge to stare until she remembered that she didn't really have to. Santana changed as well and they curled up in bed together with Santana flat on her back and Brittany's head resting on her shoulder and an arm draped across Santana's waist.

"It's gonna be okay," Brittany said softly into the skin of Santana's shoulder. Santana looked down at her wordlessly. Eventually Brittany looked back up at her, "I can practically hear you thinking, worrying about me being programmed, about someone else coming after me, about how long we're gonna have to run. I just want you to know that it's gonna be okay."

"How do you know?" Santana asked.

"Because I love you and you love me," Brittany said, "As long as we're together we'll be okay."

"You seem really sure of that."

"I'd rather be running for my life with you, than doing anything else without you," Brittany said before leaning up to press her lips to Santana's. Santana smiled into the kiss and sighed happily. They both drifted off to sleep shortly after.


	8. Contacts and Conflicts Part Three

**A/N: Okay, so when I said that this chapter was already halfway done, I was exaggerating a little… or well, I thought it was true at the time, so guess it would be a little more accurate to say that I was just plain old wrong. So, sorry this took longer than expected but really ten days between chapters is practically nothing after waiting five months, amirite? Thanks to everyone who follows/favorites/reviews, I'm glad to know that you're still enjoying this.**

**And now we finally get to the conflict part of the "Contacts and Conflicts" arc of this story. I've never really written an action scene before, other that the brief and entirely one sided throwdown between Santana and Sam back in chapter three. I hope I did okay. Reviews of this chapter in particular would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.**

**Edited: Trigger Warning, Violence and Character Death. Sorry I forgot to tag this before.**

**Chapter 8**

**Contacts and Conflicts Part 3**

They were both awakened by the sound of an alarm. Brittany sat up slowly, but Santana practically leapt from the bed. She was out the door and down the hall to the main room in less than thirty seconds. Brittany just blinked in surprise at the speed with which Santana was able to move. If all assassins were that fast, she suddenly understood why Santana had insisted that she run from any confrontations with them.

Down in the main room, Abe was in the process of shutting the alarm off when Santana burst into the room. "Have we been breached?" She asked.

"No, that alarm is much louder and comes with flashing lights," he said, "This is just my biometric scanner alert. It means there are assassins on the campus, probably the pair tailing me, but let's look to be sure." Abe finally got the alarm switched off and brought the video feed that had triggered it up on the monitor wall. There they saw a woman with long blonde hair pulled back tight in a ponytail, dressed fairly inconspicuously in black pants, a loose white shirt, and a moss green, light jacket. Walking with her was a tall guy in a long trench coat with all black clothes underneath wearing big black sunglasses. "That's them," he said.

"He's an assassin?" Brittany said from behind them having entered the room unnoticed, "He looks like he just walked of the set of The Matrix."

Abe laughed but Santana didn't get the reference. "Is she just really short or is he insanely tall?" Santana asked.

"He's very tall," Abe answered, "Six foot three, at least."

"Who are they?" Brittany asked, "Are they after us?"

"They're babysitting Abe," Santana said, "Making sure he doesn't get grabbed by The Templars." Brittany didn't seem to understand. "Abe used to be in The Brotherhood, so he knows a lot about us...them," she corrected herself. "They have to make sure he doesn't get abducted and tortured for information." Brittany nodded. Santana turned her attention back to the screen and said, "But Brittany brings up a good point, who are they?"

Abe clicked on a couple of things and brought up a picture of the guy. He had short dark hair, dark eyes, and crooked smirk. "His name is Longhorn. Looks like he's fairly new on the job, hence why he looks so ridiculous. No other assignments in his file. Looks like I may be his first job."

"He's got something slung under his shoulder beneath that coat," Santana observed from the video feed, "Does his file say what sort of weapons he specializes in?"

Abe's eyes went back to the file on his computer monitor as he read, "Oh, well that's fucking… that can't be right," he said, "Says here that he carries an HK G36C."

"_What?_" Santana said.

"What's that?" Brittany asked.

"It's an assault rifle," Abe said.

"This moron's everyday carry weapon is fucking automatic rifle?" Santana yelled at the monitor wall, "How the hell do you leave no evidence behind when you're pumping out 750 rounds per minute? How do you protect innocent life when you're fucking spraying bullets everywhere?"

"He's never had a kill order before," Abe reminded her.

"How the hell did he even get off the damn farm?"

Abe, still looking over his file, laughed a little and said, "Nepotism. He's a legacy."

"That figures," Santana said.

"What's that mean?" Brittany asked.

"The Brotherhood likes recruiting what they call legacies, family members of past and current assassins, because at least to some extent they already understand the sacrifices necessary to lead this life," Santana explained, "I'm one of them. My father was an assassin before me. He's a full-fledged Brother now, part of The Brotherhood's command structure. Sometimes legacies turn out like me and sometimes they think they're in a John Woo movie."

"You don't know what The Matrix is, but you know who John Woo is?" Brittany asked.

"My pop culture is very hit-and-miss," Santana said, "I've told you that before, but I've spent a lot of time in Hong Kong, so yeah, I know who John Woo is." She returns her attention again to Abe, "Do we know who the girl is?"

He clicked on something and his picture is replaced by hers. Her hair is loose in the picture, hanging down past her shoulders. She has hazel-green eyes and very stern expression on her face. "Wow, she's really pretty," Brittany said.

"Her codename is Ladybird," Abe said.

Santana turned away from the monitor that still showed them walking around the campus. "Ladybird? Seriously? Are you sure about that?"

"Yeah," Abe said confused, "I know her… professionally, I mean. We worked together a couple of times. Why?"

"I really just wanted to ignore these people and just go about my damn business, protecting my girl, but I've got a message that I said I'd deliver to Ladybird if I ever ran into her. Damnit, Sam!" She looked to Abe who apparently hadn't fully grasped her meaning, "I've got to go out there and talk to her," she said.

"That's a terrible idea," he said, "In fact that may be the worst idea you've ever had. There's a really high likelihood that The Brotherhood knows that you're off mission. You know as well as I do that rogue assassins are the most well known people in the whole Brotherhood, and there are many of them who shoot first and ask questions never. You going out there is borderline suicidal." He studied her face and saw clearly that he hadn't said anything she hadn't already thought of herself. "I could give her the message," he offered at last.

Even before he finished speaking Santana was shaking her head, "Can't risk it," she said, "If they're wise to me going off the reservation then they could be onto you, too. If they think that you're working against The Brotherhood, which you sort of are, they'll just kill you to save themselves the headache of having to deal with you."

Abe seemed to take this to heart. "And you can't let this one slide?" There was pleading in his eyes but it was no use. She wasn't giving in.

"Sam helped us get away," Santana said, "Covered our tracks and gave a day's head start, so you know I can't go back on that."

"Okay," he sighed as he started typing quickly on his keyboard, "Give me an hour to lock everything down and I'll be on my way. Then you can go have your face to face with the trained killers who probably want you dead." His naked contempt for Santana's plan was obvious but then that was part of what Santana liked so much about him. Abe was a straight shooter, no bullshit. If he thought you were being an idiot, he'd tell you.

"Sorry you have to flee your Batcave," Santana said.

"It'll be fine," Abe said still typing, "They'll never find this place. I'll be gone before they know what's what and for all they know I was never in Boston. No connection to you, thus no reason to do me any harm."

As Abe went about the business of locking down his base, Brittany and Santana grabbed their things from the room they'd used. Then Santana brought them back into the dojo and started pulling open lockers one after another. Finally at the fourth locker she pulled out a Kevlar vest and held it out to Brittany and said, "Put this on." Without missing a beat she continued pulling open lockers. Two more lockers down she found a belt of throwing knives that she quickly secured around her abdomen and covered with her shirt. Three further lockers down she pulled out a pair of jackets and handed one to Brittany who was still struggling with the vest.

Santana stopped her searching and helped Brittany get the vest secured. "It's really heavy," Brittany said, "Kinda hard to breathe."

"Yeah, well, it will keep bullets out of your major organs," Santana said.

"What are the coats for?"

"They're Kevlar weave fiber with plates to protect your arms too," Santana explained, "Extra protection." Santana stared at Brittany for a long silent minute. "No chance I could convince you to go with Abe and I'll catch up with you later?"

Brittany slowly shook her head. "Because what if that's what they want me to do? What if they want me with him and not you and someone else is laying in wait? No offense to Abe but I don't really trust him to be able to protect me like I do you."

Santana smiled at her. Trust was a word that had been on her mind a lot the last few days, as in would Brittany ever trust her again, now she had her answer. She pressed her lips together before rocking up on her tip toes to press a kiss to Brittany's lips. "Your first instinct still needs to be to run," Santana said, "even if that means leaving me to deal with these guys."

"What?" Brittany said, "No!"

"Brittany," Santana admonished, "You promised me. We pinky swore."

Brittany sighed and looked down. "I know," she said, "I just don't like the idea of leaving you behind."

"I don't like the idea of you leaving," Santana said, "Not at all. I want you with me at all times, always, but if it's between that and keeping you alive, you know what I'm going to pick."

The vest was finally secured to Santana's liking so she had Brittany don the coat as well. "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything," Santana said.

"Why do you call him Abe?

Santana's left eyebrow arched as she looked for any indication that Brittany was kidding. She didn't appear to be. "That-that's what you want to know? Right now?" Brittany smiled softly. "I hate this stupid codename shit that we're supposed to use, so I usually make up nicknames for everyone. His codename was Lincoln and he's a shitty liar, so I called him Honest Abe which eventually got shortened down to just Abe."

"Cool," was all Brittany said as she turned and walked out of the dojo slinging the coat over her shoulder. Santana followed after her. Abe still had some time to go on what he was doing, so they raided his kitchen for some food and water to hold them over in case things with the assassins went badly and they wound up needing to hole up somewhere without provisions.

By the time they were loaded up with as much as Santana would let them carry, Abe said that he had everything in the base locked down to the best of his abilities, which meant that it was damn well locked down. He led them through a door in the back of the main room which opened into the server room for his computer network. Passing through the doorway felt like walking into a sudden snowstorm. The room was kept colder to keep the servers from overheating but since the servers were now shut down there was no heat to off-set the temperature.

They both quickly donned their jackets, knowing that they'd likely need them outside anyway whether there was violence or not.

Another door on the far side of the server room opened onto a short hallway with three sets of elevator doors. The button panels only had up buttons, which was hardly surprising considering how far underground they already were. Santana reached out and pushed the button as Abe flipped open his tablet and brought up the surveillance footage of the two assassins outside. "The elevator will let out in the parking garage. They're up by the Athletics Center, due north of where you'll be." The door in front of them opened and all three of them moved into it. Abe hit the G button for the Ground Floor and the LL button for Lower Level. They rode for a few minutes in silence before the door dinged as the elevator car came to a gentle stop. "I hope you aren't horribly killed in this ridiculously stupid plan."

The doors slid open and Abe rolled himself out. Santana moved to stand between the elevator doors before they could slide closed. "Abe, come on," Santana called after him. He stopped himself rolling away and turned back to face them. "You don't have to think this is the best idea in the world. God knows, I don't," she said smiling softly, "but, please… you understand _why_ I'm doing this, right? I gave him my word. You of all people know what my word means to me."

"I know," he said softly as he looked at his lap, "but you're my only friend in world, Mac. And there's an idiot up there with a machine gun who probably has orders to kill you and no compunction about doing it."

"I'll be careful," Santana promised.

"Of course you will. You're always careful," Abe said, "I'm just scared that's not going to be enough this time." There was heavy silence between them for a long, strained moment. "I dunno, I've got a bad feeling about this." Santana didn't know what to tell him. She was pretty sure there wasn't really anything she could say that would make him feel any better. "Take care of your girl, Mac," he said finally before giving her a sad smile and turning again to wheel away.

Santana stepped back into the elevator car and back into Brittany's waiting arms. She wrapped Santana up and held her so tight that is was well past uncomfortable with the armor from Brittany's vest digging into her back, but Santana didn't say anything, instead just placing her hands over Brittany's joined hands on her stomach. A simple gesture hadn't meant so much to her since before her mother had passed. "I'm sorry," Brittany whispered.

"Not your fault," Santana replied just as softly. They rode in silence for the brief remainder of the trip up to the next level. Brittany let go when the doors dinged again. Santana reached back with one hand and took hold of Brittany's leading them both out. Both of them walked softly through the garage.

As they neared the door that led out onto the campus Santana stopped and turned to look back at Brittany. "Is this stupid?" Santana asked, then before Brittany could voice her confusion at the question she said, "What are odds I'm projecting on her?"

That seemed to clear up nothing for Brittany, "Who?" she asked.

"Ladybird," Santana said, "Sam said he fell for Ladybird. He never said whether or not she ever loved him back. What if I'm risking my life and yours to deliver a message that she doesn't give a shit about? Am I just projecting our situation onto them?"

"I...I don't know," Brittany said, "Do you think you are? Do you... you don't know her at all, do you?"

"Never saw her before, never heard the name before Sam mentioned it the other day," Santana said.

"Then what do your instincts tell you?"

Santana shut her eyes took a deep breath. "My instincts are to tell her," Santana said, "Maybe she cares, maybe she doesn't, but my instincts say tell her, to keep my word to Sam."

"Then that's what we'll do," said Brittany.

Santana nodded. She was slightly in awe of the trust that Brittany had for her after so short a time. She wasn't sure what she'd done to earn it, but she wasn't about to question it now though. "Brittany, if this guy out here even so much as raises that gun in our direction, I want you to run. Run to the bus station, train station, or wherever and get somewhere safe."

"But..."

"I'll find you, Brittany," Santana cut off any forthcoming argument. "I don't want you to tell me where you'll go, because if the worst should happen and they take me alive, I don't want them to torture it out of me. Just go where you feel safe and I'll pick up your trail again, I promise. I'll always find you."

Brittany smiled and pressed her lips to Santana's in a bruising kiss. "I love you," she said.

"I love you, too."

**X**

Santana's first impression of Ladybird and Longhorn was that they didn't get along at all. She and Brittany had tailed the assassins for a few of minutes now and they hadn't even once looked at each other in that time. There was never once so much as a hint of a smile. Their bodies were both rigid and stiff. Ladybird honestly looked like she was wound so tightly that Santana wouldn't have been surprised if her head just exploded spontaneously.

Abe could hide and protect himself as well or better than anyone she'd ever known, so both of them were taking what was basically a glorified babysitting job way too seriously. That is, of course, unless they knew that Santana had gone rogue and someone had tipped them off that Abe was her best friend and thus she'd be most likely to turn up here. That thought had her once again reconsidering this plan.

But really if The Brotherhood had expected her to surface here, there would be twenty assassins here, not two, and it certainly none of them would be this useless tit Longhorn. Abe's biometric scanners where state of art, so if there were more assassins around, he'd have known about it, so the only conclusion Santana could come up with then was that these two were just way too uptight about what was basically a bullshit job.

They were currently patrolling along the edge of the faculty parking lot outside the Athletic Center. Santana and Brittany were taking cover crouching behind a row of cars. Santana was surprised, though she probably shouldn't have been, about how quietly Brittany could tread when she needed to. Thus far she'd been so quiet that Santana might have had to check to see that she was still back there if not for their joined hands.

When they'd been following them for more than twenty minutes without detection, she didn't know whether to be proud of their stealth skills or embarrassed for Ladybird and Longhorn's lack perception. Eventually it became clear to Santana that they were never going to separate. She wasn't expecting them to, just sort of hoping they would so they could avoid even speaking to Longhorn. She looked back to Brittany and silently mouthed _Stay Down_ to her. Brittany nodded and released her hand. Santana then crept several cars down the line before moving around the side of an SUV keeping low to the ground.

Despite it being night the parking lot was very well lit, so staying out of sight wasn't really an option. She had to settle instead for going unnoticed. Her coat had a hood on it, although as far as she knew it wasn't armored. It was just a hood. She flipped it up over her head, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and walked roughly in the direction of the Athletic Center, timing her pace to cross just behind them as they came her way. She had to hope that they didn't slow down since she couldn't turn to look at them without them potentially identifying her.

Sure enough, mere moments later they walked past her. Longhorn looked even taller in person than he did on the video feed which was slightly freaky. Ladybird was fairly tall herself, a good three to four inches taller than Santana, which made her a pretty good human shield. Just as they were past she pulled her hands back out of her pockets and quietly slipped a pair of knives out of the belt around her torso. She moved silently up behind them and then all at once she grabbed Ladybird from behind and pulled her between herself and Longhorn.

She wrapped her right arm around Ladybird's neck hold the blade of one knife against her throat. However, as she did this, she heard the distinct click of someone taking the safety off of a handgun. A split second later Santana could feel the barrel pressed against her ribs just above her stomach. Presumably it was still in a shoulder holster under Ladybird's jacket. "Nice reaction time," Santana said into her ear, "Got a message for you, Ladybird."

"Let her go!" Longhorn roared when he finally noticed that his partner wasn't beside him any longer. He reached for his gun also slung from his shoulder.

"You leave the gun where it is, Longhorn," Santana admonished, "or I'll put one of these in your throat."

"You think you're better than me?" he said.

"Quite certain of it, in fact," Santana replied confidently, "But at this point you couldn't possibly shoot me and not hit Ladybird here as well. That's sort of the major downfall of using firearms." He made no immediate move to lay hands on his gun. "Now," Santana continued, "despite our current situation, I actually have no interest in harming either of you. I'm just here to give Ladybird a message."

"You're Firebrand, right?" Longhorn said, "We're not interested in your message."

"Who or what is Firebrand?" Santana said, "I'm Lady Christina Vargas and I came here to deliver a message to Ladybird from a guy who called himself Barracuda. You guys all have very interesting names, by the way."

"You're lying," Ladybird growled, "Barracuda's dead."

That tipped Santana's curiosity about what exactly had gone down between them. Although it was a curiousness that would have to wait for a different time, now certainly wasn't the time to get into it. "He was alive and well and living in New York City two days ago. If he's died since then, I'm sorry I didn't get to you in time."

"Let her go," the idiot said again.

Santana felt Ladybird tense up in her grip and she worried that the bullet in the chamber of that gun was about to rip through her. It seemed unlikely since the gun was still holstered. If she pulled the trigger now, she ran a serious risk of it backfiring on her. If Ladybird was any kind of profession (and that was kind of a big "if", considering her partner), then she'd wait for the chance to actually draw her weapon. "I swear to _God_, Vargas," Ladybird said, "If you're using him… my memory of him, to get to me there's nowhere you can go that I won't find you. There's no hell I won't put you through…"

"He said," Santana whispered, "he said to tell you that he's lucky to have been where he has been."

Ladybird quickly yanked not one but two handguns free of their holsters. However instead of pointing them at Santana, she had them trained on Longhorn. "You son of a bitch!" she yelled, "You told me he was dead. You said you saw it. I'm gonna fucking kill, you motherfucker!"

"That's what he told me to tell you," Longhorn bellowed over her.

Santana was stuck for what to do; this was not a situation she had begun to anticipate. Ladybird was right on the verge of putting bullets in her own partner and she seemed to have entirely forgotten that Santana was even there. That being said she didn't feel it wise to let her go either since she was her only line of defense against Longhorn who had definitely _not_ forgotten about her.

"Who?" Ladybird snapped out at him, "Who told you to lie to me for over a year?"

"I… I… I'm sorry," he said and then with more speed than Santana would have thought him capable of mustering he raised his automatic rifle. Just as he got it to shoulder level, as he was bracing it with he left hand, Santana threw the dagger in her dominant left hand. It sailed through the air, turning as it went and imbedding itself in Longhorn's right thigh, just above the knee. He screamed in pain and his first three shots went flying off into the sky.

Santana let go of Ladybird and ran for the relative safety of the parking lot once more. She looked back only momentarily to make sure she wasn't about to get one in the back from Ladybird, but she too was running away from the guy who was now apparently set on killing both of them. She caught Longhorn leveling to shoot again and she let loose with the knife still in her right hand. It was a wild throw over her shoulder, on the run, against a moving target, so it wasn't her best throw ever and yet it still passed close enough that he had to duck it which bought her a few precious seconds to make it to cover.

She lost sight of Ladybird but could hear her shooting back at Longhorn. She ran between two cars and slid to a stop behind a different SUV than she's passed on her way in. This one was one of those enormous Chevy Suburbans, the kind that take up an entire parking space and then some. She thought it would make good cover for the moment. She looked down the line to find that true to her word, Brittany was gone. She had to remind herself that that was a good thing.

That reminder came just moments later in the form the sound of Longhorn's rifle firing again, the first shots impacting the vehicle that she was taking cover behind. She heard the sounds, felt the vibrations, and soon she was showered in shattered glass as it rained down on her. He was plainly coming after her first.

_That makes sense_, Santana thought. She was a higher value target to The Brotherhood and he likely knew where Ladybird would run to… or at least had a decent idea anyway. This position was untenable, she decided. She pulled two more of the throwing knives from her belt as another round of bullets plugged the SUV. She no longer heard Ladybird's handguns. She wanted to try to guess which way Brittany had fled so that she could go the other way but she really had no clue.

She took a guess and said that Brittany went back the way they came so she took off to her left. In the gap between the Suburban and the compact car next to it, Santana let fly one of the daggers. She listened and heard it impact something metal just as bullets stopped flying. Presumably, he'd batted it away with the barrel of the gun but at least it had stopped him shooting at her momentarily. She tossed the next dagger completely blind over the top of the next car as she kept running. She heard him wince in pain.

She stopped and looked back at where she'd been running from when a familiar scent hit her. It was gas, and not a little bit of it. Some of his thirty odd stray bullets had hit a gas line or two in these cars and it was starting to pool up enough to be smelled. Sure enough it was running out from under the Suburban and at least one of the other cars she'd run past, and as Santana's luck would have it she was currently running downhill.

All of the glass in the car she'd just passed exploded and snapped her back to more immediate problems. She switched directions, turning to her left again and running laterally away from the flow gasoline. Another, smaller SUV was just ahead in the next row of cars and Santana made for them.

The bullets stopped momentarily and Santana looked through the window of the truck to see Longhorn stride through the first line of cars and begin looking for her. He'd lost her for the moment. She ducked down to re-examine the gas situation and sure enough it was quickly becoming a river. Also, moron was standing in the thing and didn't seem to care.

She circled the SUV to stand behind it, between it and an actual pick-up truck. Longhorn fired but not at her. She wasn't sure if he was just trying to flush her out or if he was shooting at someone else. Santana's brain went immediately to Brittany but that notion was dispelled when she heard handgun fire.

Santana dared to take a glance out at where they were. She couldn't see where Ladybird was (if indeed it was Ladybird and not Campus Police or Boston PD) but Longhorn was facing generally away from her. This meant she had time to come up with and execute a plan.

She hated unpredictable and uncontrollable elements in her plans and there were two in this situation: Longhorn and the stream of gas. She still had no idea why he'd attacked Ladybird and the gas… well one stray bullet bouncing off the asphalt could cause a spark and ignite the whole thing. So she opted to use those two things against each other. She unsheathed two more daggers. Her first instinct was just to bury both of them in his back but that was pretty likely to be armored. She knew his legs were exposed since he still had one knife sticking out of him. She let loose the daggers one after the other and both of them stuck just as she'd meant them to, one in his right calf muscle, one in his right ankle just beside his Achilles' tendon.

The pain had to be excruciating judging by the sounds he made. Santana continued making her way back up the row of cars, away from Longhorn and away from where she assumed Ladybird to be. She looked back to see him fall on his face in the river of gasoline. There, Santana thought, now he's covered in it. He can't shoot anymore.

That didn't stop her desire to vacate the area though since for all she knew Ladybird would be coming after her next. She chanced one more glance back to see Longhorn pushing himself up off the ground and Santana had to give him credit for tenacity, if nothing else. He used the barrel of his gun for leverage since as Santana had guessed his right leg looked pretty much useless. He pushed himself up and leaned his weight against the nearest car, but then he did something that Santana hadn't anticipated. He raised the gun and leveled in at her. "Oh my God, you jackass!" Santana shouted at him, "You're covered in gasoline…"

The plea was all for naught and cut short. Longhorn pulled the trigger and the muzzle fire ignited the gas on the end of the barrel which sent everything else, including Longhorn, up in flames. He screamed in pain once more as the gasoline soaked leather he was wearing not to mention his gasoline soaked hair caught fire. He fell back down again which served to catch river of gas on fire as well. The fire quickly spread in both directions.

Unfortunately for her, Santana wasn't aware of any of this because Longhorn's last shot had hit the parking lot not three feet from where she was standing and skipped off hitting her in the left thigh just below her butt. Her leg as well as her lower back on that side screamed in pain and her eyes slammed shut. She tried her best to force the pain down and regain her bearings but just as she was starting to get a sense of herself once more, the fire reached one of the leaking cars in the next row and it's still mostly full gas tank went up and the car exploded in fairly spectacular fashion.

Though she was far enough away to avoid the fire from the explosion, the shockwave that came with it was enough to cause her head to slam into the car in front of her. After that, everything else just went dark.


	9. Retracing

**A/N: So between this and the Brittany one shot, I'm having a very productive week having written almost 15,000 words in less than seven days. That's good for me anyway.**

**As the word count no doubt implies, this chapter is very long. Longer than any other chapter in this story by over 2k, so long in fact that I thought about splitting this as well, but there wasn't a very natural break and what this ends with and what the next chapter is going to start with don't connect up with.**

**So, long chapter. Hope everyone enjoys.**

**Chapter 9**

**Retracing**

Santana coughed herself awake. Her vision was blurry, her ears were ringing, and she tasted asphalt on her tongue, everything around her smelled like smoke. There was a pain in her left leg she couldn't identify and there was blood on her clothes that she also couldn't identify. There was a burning wreck of a car nearby and two other people on the ground, one of them on fire and not moving, thus probably dead. None of those things concerned her remotely as much as the fact that she didn't know where Brittany was.

Her head was killing her. Moving at all hurt like hell which is why she was still lying on her side on the ground.

There were three cars that were currently on fire. Two of them seem to have exploded; one had just caught fire.

She needed this throbbing in her head to stop so she could focus on what the hell was going on. She raised her hand to touch her forehead and found a sizable welt growing there. Even a light touch of the area sent a sharp stabbing pain directly into her brain. Strangely enough that actually worked. The brain's pain receptors prioritize pain and sharp, stabbing pains are generally more life threatening than dull, throbbing pains so sharp trumps throbbing and for whatever reason stabbing pain didn't stop her from thinking.

She was definitely missing some time but that in conjunction with the knot on her forehead made sense. Head injuries can often result in short term memory loss.

So what did she remember?

She remembered Longhorn shooting at her and Ladybird shooting at him.

She remembered smelling something…

Gas, she smelled gas, gasoline. That explained the fire. Longhorn shot up a bunch of cars and somehow the gas caught fire. The cars that still had a lot of gas left in them exploded. The big SUV had been the first thing hit, its tank was almost empty so not enough pressure to explode. She didn't actually remember any of this happening, she was just extrapolating.

Longhorn, he was the dead guy on fire. No one else in the world is that tall… okay, so not really true but whatever. How did he get dead? Did she do that? Throw lit matches at him or something? Did she have matches on her? It wasn't coming to her; that memory was probably long gone and never coming back.

What else? Other person on the ground… female, singed blonde hair, possibly a result of the explosion, fair skin tinged with soot and ash from fire/explosion, not Brittany though, thank God, she was pretty sure it was Ladybird. Santana still had no idea where she and Ladybird stood. Why had she started shooting at Longhorn? Longhorn shot at her first, right? Sam, Sam's message, she'd delivered it as promised.

Sirens, she heard sirens in the distance. That meant she hadn't been out long. It also meant that she needed to flee the area. Santana dragged herself to the nearest car and started to haul herself to her feet. She failed at it twice before she finally managed. It was an enormous act of will on her part. Her entire left side hurt, her leg and lower back particularly. She quickly felt the area looking for a piece of glass or something sticking into her but she couldn't find anything. She'd have to deal with it later. She needed to clear the scene.

She looked back down to where Ladybird lay. She was torn between checking on her and saving herself. Taking a second to examine her, Ladybird didn't appear to be bleeding, she wasn't on fire or even anywhere near the fire (the explosion probably threw her clear), and she was plainly breathing normally. With that, she was officially on her own, since as far as Santana knew Ladybird would try to kill her as soon as she regained consciousness. Not worth the risk.

Santana determined that the blood on clothes was most likely her own but it didn't seem to be gushing from any place at the moment so it was time to hobble.

As soon as she'd taken three steps, Santana knew what the problem was, she'd been shot. Each step she took was agony, lightning racing up and down her left side. Even the pain suppression techniques that she knew didn't come anywhere near dealing with this. The bullet must be lodged against a nerve. If Longhorn had shot her with that ridiculous gun then it would have gone straight through, possibly taking the leg with it, plus how on Earth would he ever get the bullet at that angle being so tall. That left only Ladybird… all the more reason to get away from the scene.

But that was a problem, she could barely walk, let alone run. She was never going to get clear of the area before the authorities arrived. She gritted her teeth and tried her damnedest to walk normally. She was looking for anywhere that she could possibly hide until everyone left, when suddenly Ladybird was standing in front of her pointing a gun at her chest. Santana did _not_ have the strength to fight her right now.

"Look me in the eyes and tell me he's alive," she said sternly, her intense hazel eyes searing into Santana, "If you were lying to me, I'll kill you right here and now… Firebrand."

"He's alive," Santana squaring her shoulders as best she could, "Or like I said, he was two days ago. I can't swear about now."

Ladybird studied her hard for a very long, very tense minute looking for any sense that she was deceiving her. Finally, she re-engaged the safety on her gun, holstered it and said, "C'mere," draping Santana arm over her neck and putting an arm around Santana's waist. "Thanks for leaving me back there," she said snidely.

"Thanks for shooting me," Santana retorted.

"I didn't shoot you," she replied rather confidently.

"I guess you'll see when you drive me somewhere to get this bullet dug out of me," Santana said.

"Yes, we will," Ladybird replied, "I've got a car just up here." Santana did her best to help carry at least some of her weight on her good leg but really Ladybird was doing all of the work. Santana was mostly just choking down the pain. "Normally they tell doctors to ask people who may have a concussion to repeat basic information about themselves, but we're not really supposed to share that information. Code names?"

"No, I fucking hate dumbass code names," Santana said, "I can never remember the stupid things. Primary aliases."

"Okay, fair enough," she said, "Quinn Russell, 5531 River Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts."

"River Street? Nice," Santana said, "Though I don't buy you as a Quinn at all, but whatever. Mine is what I told you Lady Christina Maria Francesca Louisa Vargas, though I don't make people call me by my title...or my full name. Residence is at 22nd Street and Ninth Avenue, New York."

Ladybird, or Quinn, brought them to a stop beside a black Ford Explorer and dug the keys out of her jacket pocket. "A Lady lives in Chelsea?" she asked unlocking the back door.

"A Lady likes ethnic diversity," Santana said as she sprawled across the backseat of the car. She screamed in agony when she accidentally shifted the wrong way and most of her weight ended up on her bullet wound.

"Can you be quiet please?" Quinn said as she settled into the driver's seat, "In case you forgot, we're running from the police here. Women screaming in pain tend to draw attention to that. God, you act like you've never been shot before."

"I haven't," Santana growled through gritted teeth as she struggled to readjust herself.

Quinn started up the car and backed out of the space driving slowly towards the highway to avoid drawing any further attention to themselves. Once they were well off the campus, Quinn looked back at her and said, "You've seriously never been shot before?"

"No," Santana said dryly, "You see, I'm actually _good_ at my job."

"Just shut up and try not to bleed to death," Quinn said.

Santana thought to make a comment in response but found that she was just too tired to care. Now that she was lying down in a semi-comfortable position, it became obvious just how much of her energy that whole gunfight had burned up. So instead of coming up with a witty rejoinder, she just laid head down in the backseat while Quinn drove.

She never fell asleep as such but she definitely zoned out for at least a good twenty minutes, maybe more, and only snapped out of it when she heard Quinn open the door and start climbing out. "Say down," she said, "I'm going to go make sure everything's in order. I'll be right back."

"Wait," Santana called after her. Quinn turned back to her. "Where are we?"

"Harvard Medical School," Quinn said, "Wait here just a minute." She shut the door without waiting for anything more. Santana's head fell back down to the seat to wait. Her ass and leg were killing her. Again it was that throbbing pain that prevented her higher brain functions from working. It was just as well, she didn't want to think right now.

It wasn't long before Quinn returned pulling open the passenger side rear door, the one nearest Santana's head, and rolled up a gurney up the car. "Can you crawl?" she asked. Santana nodded and dragged herself along the length of the seat and onto gurney.

"Why'd you bring me here?" Santana asked as Quinn wheeled her into the building.

"If I'd taken you to the ER with a bullet in you, they'd have called the cops," Quinn said.

"And they'd match ballistics to your gun and arrested you for shooting me," Santana said, "I knew you shot me."

"I didn't shoot you," Quinn said.

"I know why we didn't go to the ER," Santana said, "I meant why _here_? Do you know somebody here who doesn't mind being a gunshot doctor?"

"Something like that," Quinn said but didn't elaborate as she guided Santana's gurney down the vacant hallways.

After a few minutes she turned Santana ninety degrees and pushed her through a set of double doors. Santana looked up to find herself in a surgical theater. There was a tray where the instruments would sit, lights, there were even modesty curtains. What there didn't appear to be was a surgeon. "Is there a doctor in the house?"

"Nope," Quinn said as she pulled Santana to a stop more or less in the middle of the room next to an operating table and Santana slowly moved herself of to it, "You're stuck with me. I'm going to go get the instruments and scrub up. You work on getting your pants off." She wheeled the instrument tray off to one side.

Santana pushed her hips up so she could undo her pants, then lay back down as she worked them over her hips and down her legs. "You do know what you're doing, right?" she asked Quinn scrubbed her hands at the sink. "You're not like about to just yank a damn bullet out of my leg with a pair of forceps and a bottle of scotch are you?"

"I don't have any scotch," Quinn said over her shoulder.

"Yeah, that's really funny," Santana said.

"I've been trained in field surgery," Quinn said, "I've pulled more than a few bullets out of people. Only one person died and it was a long shot that I was going to save her anyway."

"You're not the most reassuring person in the world, you know?" Santana said.

"Oh shut up," Quinn said as she rinsed her hands and started pulling on gloves, "You're barely even bleeding."

"Well having a bullet in my leg and god knows what in my back isn't exactly pleasant and being as you're responsible for both, could you please hurry the fuck up?" Santana griped. "This thing hurts like a bitch."

Quinn made no move to hurry as she retrieved the instruments from the autoclave and lined them up on the tray. She then walked over to another drawer and retrieved some packaged items, then brought everything over to Santana. "For the third time, I didn't shoot you."

"Well Longhorn is too tall to have shot me at this angle," Santana said, "He would have to been laying on his belly to… Sorry, I didn't mean to… I'm sorry your partner's dead, even if he was, y'know, trying to kill both of us."

"It's alright," Quinn said, "We weren't really that close. He was…" She shook her head. "He got on my nerves most of the time and he was a terrible assassin, but occasionally he was a good guy… up until he tried to kill me. Plus he lied to me about Barracuda being dead everyday for a year, so you won't find me shedding any tears." She pulled a light towards her and flipped it on illuminating Santana's backside. "I'm not going to be able to sedate you," she said, "I don't have the training and I don't have a nurse to keep watch on you, but I can tell just by looking that I'm going to have to open this wound to get the bullet out. I'll give you a local, but it's not going to help much."

"Do it," Santana said laying her head back into the mat of the surgical table.

Quinn unwrapped and uncapped a hypodermic and jabbed it into Santana's thigh. "If the pain becomes overwhelming, don't fight the urge to pass out." After giving the shot a few minutes to take effect, Quinn went to work with a scalpel and Santana winced in pain but resisted the urge to scream since she wasn't entirely sure if they had the okay to be here.

Quinn was right, the local anesthetic hadn't helped much at all. The top layers of skin and muscle were numb but it didn't take long for the scalpel to hit fully sensitive flesh. "You're not bleeding much," Quinn informed her, "Looks like it missed all of the major arteries."

"Great," Santana said, "Can you just pull the damn thing out?"

"As soon as I'm sure that pulling the damn thing out won't cause you to start gushing blood," Quinn replied, "I can't very well find Barracuda if you bleed to death."

"S-so," Santana winced, "That's why you're doing this?"

"That's a big part of it," Quinn said.

"What's the other part?"

"Bishop," she said.

Santana lifted her head to turn and look back at Quinn. "How do you know him and what's he got to do with this?"

"I don't know him as anything other than a code name and a voice on the other end of telephone call," Quinn said, "He's my handler. Every mission I've ever been given has come down through him. That's how I know him. Yesterday morning we all got a blast message about you going rogue. Then about an hour later, I got a phone call from Il Maestro telling me to be on the lookout for you because I was babysitting your best friend. Half an hour after that, I got a call from Bishop telling me to give you a chance, to hear you out before eliminating you."

"Huh," Santana said dropping her head back down to the mat.

If Quinn was expecting any sort of elaboration, it didn't show. "Wow," she said, "For a ricochet shot, that thing is really in there."

"Are you going to be able to get it?" Santana asked.

"Pretty sure," Quinn replied, "Just give me another minute."

"Well, it's not like I'm going anywhere," Santana said.

"Got it," Quinn said, "Got a grip on it, I mean. When I pull this out, it's gonna hurt like hell. Fair warning."

"I am so wahhhhh!" Santana screamed when Quinn yanked the bullet free. "Shit!" she added.

Quinn dropped the slug into a pan and held it up Santana's face. "Does that look like a nine millimeter shot to you?"

"No," Santana said.

"So will you finally admit that I didn't shoot you?"

"I suppose."

**X**

**1:07pm, May 24****th**

"That building there?" Quinn asked.

"Yep," Santana said, "He was working as a handyman, going by the name Sam. He also gave me the name Evan. I don't know how well you know all of his aliases."

"Pretty well," Quinn said.

"What are you going to do if you find him?"

"I honestly don't know," Quinn replied with a smile, "So far every thought has been about finding him and making sure he's really alive. I don't think I'll fully believe it until I see it for myself."

"I get that," Santana said. "Oh yeah, the forger." Quinn's eyebrow shot up. "There's a forger in Jersey, Middleton…"

"Puck?" Quinn said.

"You know him too?"

"We've met."

"Okay, then," Santana said, "You know everything I know about him." Santana opened the car door and gingerly maneuvered her way out, dragging her bags with her. "You find him, you two find somewhere and keep your heads down. Both of you have crossed The Brotherhood to help me now… or you didn't do it for me, whatever. You've aided a rogue assassin which makes you a rogue assassin."

"If what you say is true, then Il Maestro's the one who's gone rogue," Quinn said, "You should contact Bishop. I don't know what's between you two but he still believes in you."

"I hope you're right about that," Santana said, "but I can't risk it right now. Good hunting, Ladybird."

"Good hunting, Firebrand."

Santana took off down the street, limping only slightly. She and Quinn had broken into a pharmacy and loaded her up on Vicoden after her surgery which left her with fifteen stitches in her thigh. Quinn managed to retrieve the bullet fragment from her lower back without need to cut her open, thankfully. The pain was under control. Now she was just very stiff, but she wasn't going to let that slow her down.

She made her way down to the subway and hopped on the train that would take her to her best bet at trying to track down Brittany. By her reckoning, Brittany was either back in New York or in Lima, Ohio and something told her that Brittany knew she'd have a better chance hiding among the 9 million in New York than in the 30,000 of Lima. If Brittany was in New York, then the first place to start looking was her dance studio.

Brittany wasn't anywhere to be found, not that she expected her to be. Santana was actually looking for Brittany's friend and second-in-command, Mike. She didn't even have a last name but if Brittany was laying low like Santana had told her to then Mike would most likely be here from what Santana understood of the way they ran this place. Some subtle asking around got her pointed to a tall, handsome Chinese guy.

She didn't talk to him there. She actually didn't talk to him at all. Instead she left and found a good place to camp and watch for him. She couldn't exactly stand around the dance studio doing nothing without drawing suspicions and thirty stitches in her leg meant she wasn't going to be dancing anytime soon.

As she waited on the studio to close, Santana pulled out her computer, which thankfully had survived the explosion, unlike her cell phone, and did a little searching. Abe had set her up with an alert system if anyone ran either Brittany real ID or her fake. (It was supposed to be a warning system in case someone else was tracking them, but it served this purpose too.) Abe had given Brittany's alias a back story and made it legit. Santana wasn't expecting Brittany to go anywhere someone might actually run her ID, but it couldn't hurt to be thorough.

By 8:00 that night when the studio was supposed to close, Santana was officially tired of waiting on this guy which was extremely weird for her since she was normally so patient when she was tracking someone. Normally it was nothing to her to sit in place for hours or even days on end. Hell, she'd followed Brittany everywhere she went for nearly a month, but now just over six hours of waiting was far too much for her.

It was because this wasn't a job. She was only patient on the job. In real life she hated waiting and Brittany wasn't a job. Brittany was her real life and this guy staying at the studio until half an hour after closing was stopping her from catching up to Brittany, stopping her from knowing that Brittany was safe. It was something that was on her mind and had been once the immediate threat to her life was gone and her leg was stitched back up. She wanted to believe that if something had happened to Brittany that she would know… somehow… but she didn't really believe in that sort of thing. The reality of it was that not one but two shadowy cabals had a vested interest in her: The Brotherhood wanted her dead she knew for certain since that was how they got to where they were now, and if The Templars knew about Brittany disappearing with a member of The Brotherhood, then they'd likely want her dead too.

Finally at almost a quarter to nine, Mike emerged from the studio and locked the front door behind him and Santana began tailing him. He wasn't difficult to tail since Asian guys who are six feet tall tend to stand out a little. She followed him onto the subway, quietly thankful that he didn't have a car since she didn't want to have to deal with New York City traffic during a tail. They rode the train to Brooklyn where Brittany had once said they lived.

He stopped in for takeout at a sub shop, emerging a few minutes later with two sandwiches. Santana knew from conversations that Mike had either a wife or live in girlfriend named Tina, Brittany's best friend since childhood, so the other sandwich was likely for her.

His/their place was in an apartment building two blocks from the sub shop. She watched him walk in and then she went up to the front door to examine the buzzer system. Thankfully it was an older building that still had the residents' names next to the button. Admittedly it was racial profiling, but her best guess was that Mike's last name was Chang and he lived in apartment 422. Lockpicks on the service entrance door around back allowed Santana entrance into the building. She quickly and quietly got the layout of the floors and then slipped back out finding out where the exterior windows of The Chang Apartment were.

Santana scaled the fire escape of a neighboring building to the roof and perched herself there to wait and watch some more. Unfortunately there were both blinds and curtains over all of their windows and none of them ever moved all night. Lights went on and off, shadows of two people who were both definitely not Brittany moved across them.

And so Santana sat there, not moving, all night and into the morning.

Shortly after nine, Mike and a shorter Korean girl (presumably Tina) left the building together and walked a few blocks before splitting at the same subway station that Mike had used the night before. She figured there were pretty good odds that Mike was going back to the studio so she could pick him back up there later if needed.

She opted to follow Tina who walked to a nearby Starbucks. Coffee sounded like a great idea to Santana so she went in too. She let a couple go in ahead of her so that there was a buffer between Tina and herself. She thought she may well have hit pay dirt when she heard Tina order not one but three drinks to go.

Tina continued walking several more blocks and if Santana didn't know better she would have assumed that Tina was likely a native New Yorker since few other people would walk this far without hailing a cab. Maybe she just liked to walk. Finally, Tina stopped and turned into a dress shop where she was met with smiles and hugs from a heavy set black woman and a short, energetic girl with dark hair and brown eyes and an energetic smile, reminded Santana of Rachel a little. She watched Tina hand off drinks to the others and then noticed Tina's left hand and the ring on it. Tina and Mike were getting married. Brittany hadn't told her. Then she wondered if Brittany knew. Now she was even more determined to find Brittany and to somehow find a way to get her clear of all this so she could go to her best friends' wedding.

There was no good vantage point to keep watch on the dress shop, but ultimately Santana decided that it would be pointless to do that anyway, Brittany wasn't there. Odds are Brittany wasn't anywhere near the Changs or any her friends. She wouldn't want to bring her troubles down on them.

She gave up following Tina and made for the subway. It was time to approach Mike and see if he had saved the burner number that Brittany had used to call them a couple of days ago. Santana had saved the number in her phone but not had the time to commit it to memory and the phone hadn't survived her getting slammed into a car in the explosion back in Boston.

All she needed was a convincing lie and a couple more pre-paid cell phones. Fortunately, she already knew where there was a cell phone kiosk less than two blocks from the studio since she'd already bought one there. If the owner of the shop recognized her, he didn't say anything. Santana bought two smartphones and one back-up battery. An hour later she had them both set up and had a not-exactly-legal app downloaded onto one that would turn it into a makeshift cell interceptor, and she walked into the dance studio. It took her only a moment to locate Mike. "Hey, uh, you're Mike, right? Brittany's partner?"

"I am," he said, "Is there something I can help you with?"

"I was hoping so. I'm Sophia De La Cruz," she said in such a way as to imply that Mike should know the name. He didn't of course, she'd just made it up.

"Sorry," Mike said, "Name doesn't ring a bell."

"Brittany was supposed to be giving me private dance lessons but I haven't heard from her in a couple of days."

"Look if you guys hooked up and she's not calling you back, well, I'm sorry but that's just kind of how Brittany is," Mike said.

"Oh god, no," Santana feigned embarrassment, "I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say no, but no I really just mean dance lessons. I came to a few classes here but I wasn't really picking things up very quickly and I have to learn for my classes. I would have called her but my phone got stolen and I had to get a new number and all my old numbers are gone."

"So so weird," Mike said, "The same thing just happened to Brittany."

"New York, right?"

"New York," Mike repeated, "but as to the dance lessons, I'm afraid Brittany left town on vacation a few days ago, very suddenly. There may be someone else who can help you around here. I would but I'm stuck running this place while she's gone plus trying to plan a wedding."

"A wedding? Your wedding?" Santana asked.

"Yeah," he said with a little smile.

"Congratulations, when's the big day?"

"Oh, not for a while now," Mike explained, "We both have huge families spread all over the country, not to mention the family members back in China and South Korea. We're still trying to figure out when exactly we can get the most people here. It's looking like next spring sometime."

"That's cool," Santana said, pausing only just a minute before saying, "Okay, I really like working with Brittany and if she's only going to be out of town a few days then I'd rather just wait on her. I know you'd probably never give me her number since you don't know me, but could you call her and ask if she knows when she'll be back? I'm sorry, I know I'm imposing."

Mike seemed to consider it for a minute before pulling out his phone. He made the call from a saved entry. If he'd dialed the number then Santana would have been able to deduce the digits, but oh well. Instead she settled for pressing the button on the cell interceptor in her right hand. Mike held the phone to his ear and listened. Thirty seconds later Santana's phone dinged and a moment later Mike hung his up. "No answer, no voicemail. Sorry."

"Not your fault," Santana said, "Thanks for trying. I'll try back in a week or so."

Santana was sort of privately thankful that Brittany hadn't answered her phone since she didn't really know what she would have done if she'd answered. She was mostly hoping that Brittany would somehow understand that it was her trying to get in touch. Anyway, she didn't have to worry about that now. Once she was outside the studio she looked at her phone again and sure enough the pirate app worked. She'd successfully cloned Mike's cell phone.

Santana make her way to a nearby coffee shop, ordered her second cup of the morning, and sat down to get to work on finding Brittany. She pulled out her laptop and plugged in the cell phone. If Brittany's cell was still on after Mike's call then she could locate it. She may not have been a complete tech geek like Abe but she could pull of a GPS trace.

She watched as the computer did it's thing. The image on the screen went from all of the United States to focusing on New England to the Tri-State area, down to Manhattan. It paused there for a couple of minutes as it narrowed in. The image sifted to Upper Manhattan and Santana's mind began to run back to all the places that she'd followed Brittany in the weeks she'd been watching her. When the image shifted again to just the Upper East Side, her eyebrows furrowed until it shifted again and suddenly Santa felt incredibly stupid, "Idiot," she muttered to herself, "You told her to go somewhere safe." Sure enough, when the image on the screen shifted one final time, it pegged Brittany's location, or at least Brittany's phone location as being in Santana's safe house.

Santana couldn't shove her things in her bag fast enough. She took off out of the shop, leaving behind her untouched coffee. She quickly flagged down a cab and gave the driver the address. The ride from the East Village to her safe house felt like it was interminable. It didn't help that it was just before noon and traffic was a bitch. If her leg wasn't hurt, Santana would be tempted to just get out and run. Hell she was tempted to do it anyway, but she didn't want to bust any stitches so she sat and rode for almost half an hour.

She was already digging out her keys as the cab pulled up to a stop. She gave the driver a huge tip and flew out of the cab. She was to the door of the dinky apartment in seconds. She was about to jam the key in the lock and open the door but thought it might do better to announce herself first, remembering that Brittany now knew how to defend herself. She knocked softly, twice and said, "Brittany, it's me. I'm going to open the door, okay?"

Slowly she slid her keys into the knob and twisted the handle. As she slowly opened the door, all she saw was darkness. All the lights were off and no one said anything or moved. There were no windows in the tiny basement apartment so the only light came from behind her through the open door. Santana worried that she hadn't actually found Brittany, just Brittany's phone. She stepped through the doorway and the door was pushed shut behind engulfing her in darkness. Suddenly she was wrapped up by strong, feminine arms in a crushing bear hug. For a moment, she wasn't sure if she was being welcomed or attacked, but soft lips being pressed against hers answered that question. She kissed back and reached around feeling the familiar curve of Brittany's back and hips pulling their bodies tight.

After several minutes of very intense kissing Brittany broke off from Santana, loosened her grip on her slightly, pressed a kiss to Santana's neck and said, "I was so scared I'd never see you again. I saw about the explosion. Tell me are you okay? It won't change anything if you're scarred up or whatever, I promise."

Santana reached behind her, now that she could actually move her arm and flipped on the overhead light. "Still think I'm pretty?" she asked jokingly.

"You're the most beautiful woman… the most beautiful anything I've ever seen," Brittany replied in all earnestness. Santana smiled at her and took a moment to take in the sight of Brittany. She was wearing a white button-up shirt that Santana was pretty sure was hers and a pair of thin pink lace panties and apparently nothing else. The shirt was slightly wrinkled and appeared to only have one button done. Brittany seemed to take notice of Santana's scrutiny. "I, um, I… well, the shirt smells a lot like you, and well, you sort of interrupted me."

"Interrupted," Santana said, "What did I interrupt?"

Brittany smiled, wise to what Santana was doing, "You know."

Santana smiled in return and shook her head, "Nope, I don't know," she said, "Why don't you show me what I interrupted?"

Both of them let go of one another. Brittany bit her bottom lip as she turned to walk towards the mattress that she'd just vacated. She undid the button on the shirt but left it on turning her head to stick her nose in the loose collar and breathed in Santana's lingering scent and sighing contentedly. Then in a lightning fast motion Brittany's panties were on the floor and Brittany stepped out of them and onto the bed. Facing away from Santana, Brittany crossed her ankles, spun in place, and sat down all in one fluid motion. Her shirt billowed up behind her as she did, briefly exposing all of Brittany before it settled back down on her. Brittany slid herself down the bed, knees bent and together at first before they slowly parted. Brittany brought her right hand up to the valley between her still cover breasts letting her fingers just barely graze the surface of the skin as she trailed it down her chest, across the plain of her toned stomach, circling her bellybutton before dipping lower. "Like what you see, baby?" Brittany said her voice sultry and full of lust. Santana stared hard, wetting her lip and silently nodding. "Help me with some visuals?"

Santana yanked her shirt overhead in a flash and reached back to unhook her bra as Brittany sighed and dipped her fingers inside of herself. Santana flung her bra to god knows where and brought a hand up to each of her breasts caressing herself gently. "Tell me how you feel, Britt."

"Hot," she said softly as she worked in and out of herself at a slow, steady pace, "Ohhh… and wet, for you."

"Were you close?" Santana asked, "Before I interrupted?" Brittany nodded insistently. "Are you close now?" Brittany shook her head. Santana pinched both of her nipples causing herself to moan pretty loudly. "That help?"

"Stick your hand down your pants," Brittany said between moans slowly speed up her thrusting, "Touch yourself but don't let me see it."

Santana dropped her hands to her belt and struggled briefly to get it undone. She took two steps to stand right at the foot of the bed. Less than three inches she stood from Brittany. She got the belt loose and undid her jeans. She moved her right hand down her stomach as she moved her left up. She once again cupped her left breast just as her right hand dipped into her underwear and moaned again. "God, Brittany, baby, you should feel this pussy."

Brittany's rolled back in her head at Santana's words "Is it wet?"

"It's so wet," Santana replied as she quickened the pace of her fingers against herself.

Brittany pushed her open shirt aside and exposed one of her perfect breasts and the rosy, pink nipple atop it playing with it as she gasped and sighed. "Is it wet for me?"

"Fuckgodshityes!" Santana said as she ground her clit against the palm of her hand, "Yes, baby, all for you."

"Ready to be done with this foreplay crap?" Brittany asked.

"God, yes," Santana said, "Tell me what you need."

"Eat me," Brittany said very desperately as she withdrew her fingers, "Please, eat me." She extended the fingers coated in her wetness to Santana who wasted no time in leaning down to lick the two digits clean, even making sure to lick the small bit off Brittany's thumb. She knelt at the edge of the bed taking Brittany's long, smooth, strong legs in hand pulling Brittany closer to the edge of the bed. Santana held Brittany's right leg against her chest forcing in out straight. She placed a light kiss on the inside of Brittany's ankle, then another just below that, slowly inching her way down Brittany's leg. "God, you fucking tease," Brittany groaned.

Santana had only heard Brittany swear a couple of times, all of them while they were naked, so in a way it was sort of Pavlovian for her to find it sexy. "It'll be worth it," Santana said as pressed a kiss to the inside of her knee. Brittany pushed her hand into the mess of Santana's hair, fisting around the locks as she groaned at the teasing.

At some length, Santana finally reached the apex of Brittany. She paused and hovered just above Brittany's sex. "God, Santana _please_!" She finally ended Brittany's torment by gently pressing her lips to Brittany before sliding her tongue out to lick along Brittany's folds. Brittany's hips immediately jerked reflexively at the contact as she moaned out Santana's name. Santana brought her hands up to hold Brittany's hips and felt her trembling in excitement. Santana looked up Brittany's beautiful, naked body to her face but her head was thrown back in ecstasy and gasping.

Santana smiled at herself as she continued to lap at Brittany's core. "Look at me," Santana said but Brittany either didn't hear or didn't respond, "Britt, look at me." This time she complied, lifting her head to meet Santana's gaze. As soon as their eyes met, Santana wrapped her mouth around Brittany's clit and flicked it with the tip of her tongue. Brittany fought to keep eye contact but ultimately failed as the sensation eventually became over whelming and her head fell back as she pressed her hips up driving herself harder into Santana as her moans became more and more frequent.

"Fingers," Brittany rasped out. Santana wasted no time moving her left hand to Brittany entrance and easily sliding two fingers inside her. "Fuck, yes," she moaned loudly causing Santana to moan against her, "Faster." Santana quickened her pace as sucked her clit. "God, don't stop. Close, close, so close."

Santana would never dream of stopping. She quickly found Brittany's g-spot and stroked it with her fingertips. "Come for me, baby," Santana said. When she felt Brittany's body begin to tense, she withdrew her fingers moving them to continue to massage Brittany's clit and moved her mouth down to tease Brittany's opening with her tongue.

This finally pushed Brittany over the edge and she came undone with Santana's name on her lips, her muscles all tensed as she once more pressed herself hard against Santana, and the full force of Brittany's orgasm hit Santana in the face. Everything from Santana's nose down to her chest was covered in wetness. The scent, the taste, and, yes, the power trip of it had Santana ready to follow Brittany's orgasm with her own, almost but not quite.

Santana licked her lips as she continued to pepper delicate kissed to Brittany's lips and thighs. Only after Brittany let out a very contented sigh did Santana straighten back up to stretch her back. Brittany looked up at her just as Santana was about to start cleaning her face off. "Don't do that," she said hastily, "Don't wipe yourself off. Kiss me."

"What?" Santana asked.

Brittany quickly sat up and took matters into her own hands, grabbing Santana's head with both hands and crashing their lips together. She sucked Santana's upper lip between hers and sucked the wetness off, then repeated it with her bottom lip before pressing her lips to Santana's chin. She then licked up every drop she could find on Santana's neck and eventually migrating down to her upper chest and breasts, each in turn. Santana moaned as Brittany took the excuse to give her nipples a tongue bath. Finally Brittany sat back and said, "I love the way I taste and when I come like that I always want to taste myself as much as possible. It's…" she sighed again as her eyes rolled back again. "It's a huge turn on. I'm already ready for round two but first it's your turn, so for God's sake, take your fucking pants off."

"Okay," Santana said rising back to her feet, "But don't freak out," she added as she gently pushed her jeans down over her hips and down her legs slowly revealing the large white bandage wrapped around her left thigh, covering her wound.

"Oh my God!" Brittany shouted, "What happened to you? Why didn't you tell me about this?" Brittany gently placed both hands on Santana's leg just above her knee.

"I got shot," Santana said and shock and worry overtook Brittany face. Santana tilted Brittany's head up so she could look her in the eyes. "I'm fine," she stressed, "I'm stitched up. I've got painkillers. I can barely even feel it."

Brittany looked back down at her leg and inspected it some and asked, "When was the last time you changed this dressing?" She looked back up at Santana gnawing on her bottom lip and looking towards the ceiling. "If you're having to think about it, it's been too long, Santana." She stood up from the bed. Brittany walked to the cabinet under the sink in the kitchenette, opened the door and retrieved Santana's medical supplies, clearly having taken stock of the very small apartment in the 36 hours.

"Brittany, it's fine," Santana insisted.

"It will _be_ fine," Brittany corrected her, "once I clean and redress your leg. Now finish taking your pants off and lay down. If you're a good girl and don't fight me on this then Nurse Brittany will reward you with hot sex."


End file.
